Tag Archives: seattle

And… we’re back

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Coming back after a long trip can be an experience in itself.  We’ve been back in the US for 2 weeks now after spending 6 months in Argentina and Chile.

Buenos Aires is a drama queen–she cried the day before we left all day (AKA it rained).  Seattle welcomed us in the only way it knows how:  5 straight days of rain.  Awesome.

Luckily, things have improved since then and so far, we really like it here.

It’s a little weird being back in the US…

Probably the weirdest thing is how big the cups are when you order a drink and just general food portions – not hard to understand the underlying cause of the obesity problem here.

The second weirdest thing is that pretty much everyone is speaking English all the time.  Even after 2 weeks we still have to stop ourselves from speaking in Spanish when encountering strangers (e.g., “permiso” instead of “excuse me”).  Not an issue when in a real conversation with someone we know, but we’re just so accustomed to assuming that all strangers are Spanish speakers that it may take awhile to adjust.

Also, it’s quite a bit more expensive here, but we expected that.

Good news:  It doesn’t really feel like being ‘back’…

There are several reasons why it feels like we are basically still on our crazy adventure despite being back in the US:

  1. We’ve never lived in Seattle before, so are really enjoying exploring a new city together (it doesn’t hurt that Seattle is pretty great)
  2. Much like in South America, we still don’t have our own place to live and are bouncing around in temporary housing (special thanks to my sister and Jen’s parents for giving us places to stay!)
  3. We are still wearing the same clothes and living out of the same suitcases – due to poor planning, all of our other clothes are still in storage in San Francisco
  4. We are still gainfully unemployed – unsurprisingly, this makes quite a big difference in one’s daily schedule and level of stress
  5. We decide what we do each day – We still get to spend tons of time with each other, wake-up whenever we want and do whatever we think we’d enjoy each day

It’s pretty cool actually… While we will obviously need to address the unemployment thing in the near future (or at least the income thing) and would like to have our own place to live and some clothes without holes in them, our goal is to keep the general feeling of freedom and enjoyment of life going indefinitely.  I wasn’t sure what to expect upon return, but at this point, I’m extremely optimistic that we can make our change in mindset and lifestyle permanent.

So what have we been doing….?

We spent the bulk of the last 2 weeks driving around, getting to know the different neighborhoods of Seattle and looking at apartments.  At first we were looking for short-term furnished apartments, but we quickly discovered that for the most part short-term furnished options are either very, very expensive, or very, very crappy and sometimes both.  So, instead we started looking at real apartments and we found one that we absolutely love.

Living room image

This isn't even the whole thing

As of Oct. 12th, we are excited to say that we’ll be living just off Green Lake – only a block from my sister!  My sister and I haven’t lived in the same half of the country since high-school, so it should be really fun to be neighbors.  She just moved to Seattle in August, so we will get to explore the city together.

Stove image

Also, we will cook things on this beast

Did we mention that housing in Seattle is like half the cost of San Francisco???  This super-modern 2 bedroom right off of the lake with a patio and washer dryer in one of the pricier Seattle neighborhoods will cost significantly less than the small 1-bedroom we had back in SF.   I understand the value proposition of living in the Bay Area less and less (though ask me again after it rains here all winter).

Other than looking for housing, we’ve really enjoyed spending time with Jen’s parents and my sister and her new puppy Murphy.

What about getting a dog…?

We’re still absolutely planning on getting a dog and having lives that allow us to keep it alive (was a major consideration in our housing options).  That said, spending as much time as we have with Murphy has altered our perspective on it a little bit…  Murphy is a 5 month old Golden Retriever puppy and is unbelievably cute and fun.

Murphy sleeping image

You have to take pictures of him while he's sleeping... otherwise he is in constant motion

Murphy is one of the most gentle and well behaved puppies we’ve ever met.  Nonetheless, Murphy is an unbelievable amount of work and we have the utmost respect for my sister who works incredibly hard every day to keep him healthy and happy.  After some puppy-sitting, our view on getting a dog has changed in two primary ways:

  1. We no longer feel the same degree of urgency – we’ll still get a dog sometime in the next several months, but no longer do we feel the need to get one immediately (it helps that we will only live a block away from Murphy)
  2. We are no longer dead-set on getting a puppy – while Murphy is unbelievably cute and it seems like a really cool thing to be able to be with a dog as he/she develops, spending more time with Murphy has also opened our eyes to the many potential benefits of getting a slightly older and already somewhat trained rescue dog.  We’ll see…

What about job stuff…?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Actually, Jen has been having lots of networking meetings and even had her first interview earlier this week (ironically, it was for a consulting firm… but a very, very different type of consulting firm – more on that later).

I will continue to play with start-up ideas at least through the end of this year and will likely write more about some of them as things progress (which will be much, much easier once we have our own place to live!).

What about friends/social stuff…?

So far so good.  We haven’t been super focused on this yet as we’ve been mostly running around trying to find a place to live, but we’ve reconnected with a few old friends that live here and are already making some new friends.

We were lucky enough to get an email from Warren and Betsy from http://www.marriedwithluggage.com who read our last post that we were coming to Seattle and wanted to connect to introduce us to some folks here before they left on their own long-term trip (after 2 years of planning, they are finally leaving today for 3 years!).  It turns out that they were the Seattle hosts of Meet, Plan, Go! which you may remember from our earlier post.  They had been running weekly happy hours for people that are interested in getting together and talking about career breaks and/or long-term travel and we were able to attend one.  It was great meeting Warren and Betsy (and we look forward to keeping in touch while they are on the road and following their great blog) and it’s also really exciting to get in touch we such a dynamic and eclectic community of people interested in travel here in Seattle – a great first step to making sure we have a diverse social network.   We are eager to attend future happy hours.

What’s next…?

We continue to enjoy life while we settle ourselves into Seattle and co-create our new lives here together.  Exciting stuff.

p.s. stay tuned – we promise to get back to a more regular blogging schedule and still have tons of stuff to say about Argentina and Chile and Career Breaks and long-term travel and other stuff too.

Rehab phase 1 is almost complete; Phase 2 is coming

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Today is our last day in Chile. Tomorrow we return to Argentina. Next week we return to the US.

Phase 1 of rehab has been intense

We have been unemployed and in South America for almost exactly 6 months now.

For 6 months we have had no deadlines and no responsibilities.

We’ve had neither cellphone nor blackberry and we’ve tried to exclusively spend our time doing things that we want to do rather than things that we were supposed to do. For instance, look how long it’s been since I last got a haircut:

I need a haircut image

Luckily, I'm getting a haircut later this week

We’ve slept for as many hours as we chose to every night (except for the damn 4am geyser tour in Atacama).

Geysers de tatio image

Stupid geysers. Stupid 4am. Stupid, stupid.

We’ve taken lots of daytime naps, we’ve enjoyed bottles of wine for lunch and we’ve consumed more steak then we had eaten in the previous 10 years combined.

Dinner in Buenos Aires: Perfectly cooked Argentine beef image

And we'd do it again

At times, we’ve seen amazing landscapes. At times, we’ve sat on park benches and watched dogs play for hours. At times, we’ve sat on benches and had people try to steal Jen’s purse – that was entertaining.

We’ve read lots of books. We’ve tried to read many Spanish newspapers. This has gone poorly.

We’ve lived in 2 countries and immersed ourselves in their cultures- Argentina for 4.5 months and Chile for 1.5 months. We are happy to help you plan your trips.

We’ve sat in cafes for hours – in the beginning we had lots to talk about… later we just stared at each other… then we started bringing books… then we ran out of books… Now we don’t go to cafes so much.

Each of these things has been a critical part of our rehabilitation. By completely removing ourselves from our old environment and the associated pressures/peers/challenges, we were forced to gain perspective. We were humbled on a daily basis. It was annoying.

Through immersing ourselves in foreign cultures in which nothing is expected of us and no one cares about our resumes or has a vested interest in what we do next, we found perspective on who we had been and on who we want to be. At times it was freeing, at times it was frustrating – both are part of the process.

Through meeting people on the road (both travelers and locals) our perspective on what life can look like and the sheer number of different possibilities that exist and can lead to happiness has expanded immensely. As has our definition of happiness-now we think it requires frequent napping.

Finding this perspective was the goal of rehab phase 1. This isn’t the end. We don’t have any answers, but this new and broader perspective will serve as the foundation for phase 2.

Rehab phase 2:  Re-entry / where we go from here

Next week we will fly back to the US and begin phase 2. We are not sad to return, we are excited to start a new chapter of this adventure. It’s like a choose your own adventure book, except written for adults instead of 8 year olds.

To say that we are ‘returning’ is not entirely accurate… we don’t have a specific home to return to. We have a storage unit full of stuff in San Francisco and a car in Seattle. We have no jobs and no place to live that is our own. And, due to poor/rushed planning all of our other clothes are in that storage unit, so we will have to continue wearing the same 5 outfits that we have been wearing for the last 6 months even though all of our sweaters and socks have holes in them. This should make a strong impression in job interviews.

We won’t be picking up where we left off, we will be starting fresh in a new city. We are planning to live in Seattle for a variety of reasons. It will likely rain a lot, but also be much cheaper.

The prospect of starting fresh is a little intimidating at times, but with our newly broadened perspective, we are excited to construct lives that offer us balance. We don’t know what it will look like exactly. From a distance, it might look like a dancing penguin. No one knows. That’s what makes it exciting.

dancing penguin image

Let's hope that it doesn't look like this dancing penguin

Jen is looking for a ‘real’ job. I plan to pursue a number of entrepreneurial projects that I have been toying with for some time. In both cases, we will only consider things that we think we will genuinely enjoy. We have already accumulated plenty of option value in our careers and are ready to cash in and find things we love. The evil mongeese can suck it.

We’d like to have a dog. And we’d like to have lives that allow us to keep the dog alive. We suspect that the dog will appreciate this as well.

We plan to have hobbies outside of work. We’ve heard that this is possible. Jen would like to teach English as a foreign language in the evenings. I’m excited to return to improv comedy. Maybe we’ll even do something athletic–fear not, we pledge to continue drinking enough wine to keep ourselves firmly out of shape.

We believe that we are ready for phase 2, but re-entry comes with a number of risks. We need to be ever-vigilant for any signs of relapse.

Signs that we might be relapsing:

If any of the following occur, we may need to buy plane tickets or at least some steak…

  1. We don’t actively pursue hobbies
  2. We eat take-out dinners more than twice a week
  3. We have more than 3 days in a row of unhappiness at work (a couple of days can happen anywhere from time to time – at 3, we torch the place)
  4. More than 50% of the friends that we spend time with on a regular basis have MBAs
  5. We spend more than 10% of our social interactions complaining about our jobs
  6. We eat lunch while still typing
  7. The idea of getting a dog dies due to impracticalities of work schedule
  8. The dog itself dies due to neglect
  9. Multiple instances of cancelling social events occurs due to last-minute work conflicts
  10. We check emails on our phone while mid-conversation with others
  11. We don’t manage to leave the country at least twice a year
  12. We achieve Starwood platinum status (and are proud of it)

There are almost certainly others. We will need your help to avoid relapsing. That is why we absolutely plan to continue this blog. It will become less about South America (though there are still tons of topics we’ve been meaning to write about on Chile/Argentina and still plan to), and more about Seattle and our re-entry.

We hope to be an example not just of a couple that left our jobs to travel for 6 months, but one that also made a successful return to our careers and are better off than we were before we left.

Stay tuned.

Any other relapse warning signs you can think of that we should watch out for??