Closing in on a decision.

We went to check out a caravan show. Just a for a look around. Wallet seems a bit lighter though.

When life is going perfect, there’s no place you’d rather be, and you probably wouldn’t change a thing. I don’t mean perfect in the literal sense—we all have ups and downs and challenges. But if you have a great relationship, or are single and truly content, have work you enjoy, your work-life balance is on point, and your social life is the right fit for your social preferences, then life is pretty damn good. Nothing needs to change, perhaps aside from trying new things, experiences and so forth. Conversely, when life seems to be kicking you when you’re down, and ongoing troubling circumstances create seemingly never-ending challenges that have long become overwhelming, it can culminate into a driving need to turn things around and make choices that could propagate positive change. The danger zone, without trying to be dramatic, is when life is just okay, and things are neither great nor terrible. Let’s assume you have a great relationship, and your basic needs are met—you have a roof over your head, be it through home homeownership, having a mortgage, or you’re renting—either way, you have a place to call home. You have a job, but it’s just that, a job—it’s not great, and it’s all you can do to get through to Friday afternoon or your last shift for the week, but it’s paid work. And so, the days just keep rolling on and on, and life becomes somewhat bland, insipid. And I reckon it’s there that you’re more likely to find yourself trapped because while things aren’t amazing, they’re not terrible either—not so bad to effect change. And of those, the latter is where we’re at. First world problems.

We’ve settled on the idea that travelling Australia is what we want to do. Rather, what we need to do—ever since this seemingly crazy idea popped into our minds, we haven’t been able to ignore it. It’s always there, poking and prodding us into action, and quickly. Unfortunately, the only way we can fund this trip is to sell the house, and at the time of writing, we’ve come off the peak of the housing boom, and with regular interest rate hikes having since become the norm, we’re sliding deeper into a buyer’s market. And yet, even in a downward trending housing market, we still insist on pushing forward—we just can’t get this thought of travelling Australia out of our heads—we seem to be thinking about it 24/7. Early on we thought, or just assumed, it would take a good 12 months of planning before getting to the point where we’d be ready to, or to have even seriously considered, putting our house on the market. But our plans have quickly taken shape, to the extent that we were asking ourselves why should it take 12 months? Do we need to wait that long? Do we just take 12 months to plan simply because that’s the most reasonable thing to do? I suspect 12 months is just an arbitrary number that we pull from nowhere, with the idea being that it’s a good deal of time that will allow for lining up all of your ducks in a row, getting things in order, acquiring all of the gear you think you need, putting a solid plan in place, and ensuring that everything is just right. Ultimately though, I think it just provides time to second guess your decision and change your mind. Now that we’ve made up our minds, the thought of waiting, and with it a long, drawn out process, seems unbearable.

And so, it was settled, and the next logical step was to look at caravans. We’d already been told by our broker that financing a van is out of the question, so with caravan expo season well upon us, we figured it would be a good idea to head out to the next caravan show. In a terrible instance of timing, there was a caravan and 4x4 expo about a 50-minute drive from home, so of course the thing to do would be get out there, start looking, and get an idea of what we might be looking at within our proposed budget. I say terrible timing because it turns out we didn’t have the ability to just look at vans, driving home $11k lighter having put down a deposit. It’s often said that salespeople in general are pushy—their job is to sell stuff, not fluff around and leave you with time to pass up an opportunity. But I think in our case, perhaps subconsciously, we had every intention, or hope, of lining up a caravan.

And now, having done that, we are left to question what we have done, over and over…and over. I suspect that, even once we’ve hit the road and we’re on our way, we’ll continue on the carousel of doubt, always considering if we have made a mistake. But we think there’s too much to lose in staying in our comfort zone and reliving the same weeks, month by month, and hoping that something will change without ever searching for, and finding, a catalyst for change. The adventure begins—kind of…