Log 021: We’ve Moved…Again…Again!

Well it has been a long time since I last gave a life update, so I figured it was about time. I mean… moving a few times, getting new job, and changing up the SOP of our lives may warrant some reflection. So, where to start? I guess maybe I’ll start all the way back at the beginning of 2021.

2021

Oh boy, here I go talking about the past again. So back at the beginning of 2021, Mariah and I were taking a look at our life. I mean who wasn’t at that time, 2020 just well finished, and it had a lot of people reevaluating their lives. When we started talking it over, we realized a few things.

One: was that we were tired, and I mean very tired. At then time, Mariah and I were commuting together from Shutesbury, MA to Springfield, MA for our works. It represented about a hour commute one way. Combining this with Mariah’s 7:00 AM to 7:30 PM shifts (if we were lucky, and she got out on time), it meant longs days away from home. Additionally, the house we were renting’s primary source of heat was a wood stove. After the first part of the winter - leaving for work in the dark, returning to a freezing home in the dark, and then struggling to get the energy to warm up the house with a fire before getting ready for bed to start over again; we didn’t have it in us to keep doing this. As the reader, you may be asking yourself, well Aidan why did you live there? That sounds so far? Its way to hard to live there with that schedule? Why would you do that to yourself? Well let me tell you, it’s reason number two.

Two: was that we wanted freedom, and by that I’m talking the financial type to allow us to do more. This was a long time goal of ours since getting married. While we had no debt but student debt, we had a substantial amount of student debt. Enough that the monthly payments were higher than the rent we paid. With this in mind, we made quite a few sacrifices on our choices of rentals to allow us to tackle that debt. We were living on only a portion of my income, and putting the rest of my income & Mariah’s entire income into those loans: I’m sure you get why we made the choices we did on the above now. The thing is, that even with all of these sacrifices, we weren’t making process at the pace we wanted. The 2020 student loan interest rate pause helped a lot, but even with that, we were expecting it to take two to three years to fully pay off the loans. Honestly, we didn’t think we had it in us to keep going like this with that time horizon. So, we formulated a plan.

We weren’t blind to the solution of this fairly simple math equation. We didn’t have any power to reduce the amount that was owed, but we did have some power to try to increase the rate at which the amount owed was paid. At the time, news articles abounded about the rates that Travel Nurses were being paid, and Mariah and I decided that the potential pay day was worth the possible risks in contract work and the challenges of being apart for half to three quarters of the time.

And so… that’s how we spent our 2021. Mariah living and working in Manchester, NH, and me staying in Shutesbury, MA working in Springfield, MA.

2022

So, a year went by like a snap of a finger, and here we were in 2022. Mariah and I had spend a year living apart half time, and we were tired of it. Over that time we accomplished our second financial goal, and wanted to start exploring how we could make progress to improve our quality of life. We needed a break from the two city living, and Mariah was greatly enjoying her Travel Nursing: she liked the broad new experiences and learnings that came with her contracts. With this in mind, we chatted about what we wanted next in our lives, and came to the collusion that we wanted to travel more to follow Mariah’s Contracts. So, we starting making moves to allow this.

During the past year, we had also put an order in for a new travel Van: a Wayfarer 2022 AWD High Top Ford Transit. The 2002 Sienna was starting to get tired, 240,000 miles and 20 years of service will do that to a vehicle. Now with it being September 2021 when we made that order, our van wasn’t expected to come in until Spring 2022. This all conceded well with our planned timeline. Our lease in Massachusetts was up at that time, and Mariah had just re-signed her next three month contract in Manchester, NH for May 2022. Our plan was this: first we would pair down our possessions we kept with us to items that would fit in our new van; second we would find a new Month to Month rental in Manchester to ride out Mariah’s last contact there; and finally we would actually move to Manchester to start our new minimalist traveling lives. Oh, and lest I forget, I had to find a new job that would let me travel along with Mariah…small details. And so, it was perfect with absolutely no way paths to challenges…

Challenge One: Moving our stuff to Michigan was hard. I mean, really hard. I’ve moved interstate before, but moving in winter with only my 20 year old minivan was challenging. It took ten round trips to finally get all of our stuff back to Michigan. At the time the boarder with Canada was still closed due to COVID-19, so we were forced to take the long way round Lake Erie to Michigan which increased the one way travel time by four hours. Side note, every time I move I want to get rid of everything I own.

Challenge Two: The Van was delayed. Now luckily this was not an insane delay that some folks have seen for new cars. Our Delivery was delayed from February 2022 to May 2022. I’m going to take that as a blessing realistically; however, it did mean that we would no longer have the new van to move to our new home in Manchester, NH. This represented a small challenge: firstly, we had planned on first driving the old minivan to Michigan to drop off the last load of our stuff and secondly, we had planned to do so to sell the van to my sibling. With this delay, we would now need to take the last load of stuff to our new home, and then make a longer trip back to Michigan. While we made it work, goodness were we exhausted after getting home. Another side note, driving back from Colorado Springs, CO to Manchester, NH takes a long time!

So alright, I think I’ve made my point…Moving is Hard, how was finding a fully remote job the easiest part…

Okay, so finally, let me get to the part that the title references. We’ve moved, and moved again. So finishing out 2022, Mariah finished her contact in Manchester, NH at the end of July. We headed back to Michigan to visit family for a few weeks. Mariah had landed a contract in Roswell, NM starting at the beginning of September. After our time in Michigan was up, we made the trek down to Roswell, NM. Roswell became our home until Christmas. We took some time off, and headed to see family and friends in Tucson, AZ: that was a fun week! Finally, we drove up to what would be our new home, Show Low, AZ. Mariah had signed a new contract there from the beginning January 2023 to the end of March 2023.

2023

So here we are now in 2023. Taking in the new year, and pontificating on how I’ve got here. The past few years have been a wild ride, but after years of chasing this is the first new year that feels a little better, or at least a little more relaxed.

I’m excited for the plans Mariah and I have for this year. I won’t go into details on them here because this post is already way to long, but I can say it involves more traveling around the country to places we haven’t yet been.

Looking forward to it all, and signing off finally. - Aidan Blum