The following email was received a short time ago.
"We are still working full time but looking at retirement options and found your blog. Thank you for sharing your life, experiences and photos. I enjoyed reading it and plan to keep checking it out. Any regrets with this lifestyle?"The following is a longer version of my response to the email.
When my daughter graduated from University in 1992, I recall thinking I no longer had a need to support anyone other than myself. I could quit the "rat race". I knew how to live inexpensively. However, the earnings and investments were doing very well. It was greed that kept me wearing the suit and tie. I did not know at that time about living full time in an RV. That came later.
In 2000, work was no longer fun. It was burnout. Planning to retire at the end of 2000, I took vacations at every opportunity. In June, it was a three week Alaskan camping vacation. (Great trip. Would explore Alaska the same way again.) Tents, schedule, food was all planned for me. I brought my sleeping bag and personal stuff. On a camping trip, naturally you end up in campgrounds. When walking around one campground, I saw a guy cleaning the bugs off the windshield of his Class A coach which had Florida license plates. I stopped for a minute as he was moving his ladder. I commented that he was a long way from home. He turned and pointed to the Coach saying that was home. Boing! With that I knew what I was going to do in my retirement.
If that same experience had happened much earlier, I would have been a full time RVer many years before 2001.
There are no regrets about these past 12 years of nomadic wandering around the US -- with a concentration of exploring in the West and Southwest. It has been fun. Hoping to continue the exploring one day at a time.
On the matter of regrets...
The 25 Biggest Regrets In Life is a Forbes article.
The Top Five Regrets of the Dying was written by Australian nurse Bronnie Ware. See the author's web site Inspiration and Chai for those five regrets.
And you were very instrumental in me joining the nomads earlier rather than later. Thank you.
ReplyDeletewell said...
ReplyDeleteWe agree with you. Had we known about the joy that fulltiming brings, we would have done it much earlier.
ReplyDeleteI've wondered too...if there was a down side to going full time. So far, while reading several blogs from full timers not one person has mentioned anything. Interesting...my feet are itching to get going.
ReplyDeleteI too wish I had started earlier in life, but no regrets here about this lifestyle.
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