Quarter-Life Crisis
I’m currently sitting poolside typing this blog post while I listen to birds chirping in the trees and mopeds zooming past our hotel down the busy, narrow streets in a little hippie town called Pai. I swear Mason and I have looked at each other at least 20 times in the past three weeks and said “is this real life?” and the crazy thing is, it is.
Six months ago this wasn’t really in our plans. It started as a joke after tough days at work or a busy month. Mason would send Instagram messages to me often of travel posts, backpackers, digital nomads, real estate investors, basically anyone who wasn’t doing the 9-5 life.
In our three years of dating, we’ve decided that Mason is the visionary. He constantly has tons of ideas and is a dreamer to say the least. I am an integrator. I bring Mason’s head out of the clouds, sift through his ideas, and pick out the ones to take action on. After a few months of us fantasizing, it was March of 2023 and I was fed up with it being just an idea. I had done a little research and found a backpacking tour website that had group guided tours. Before I showed Mason, I did some stalking and reached out to three people from around the world to get their reviews on the tours. I knew if I wanted to execute my plan, I needed to have resources to back it up!
After a week of thinking on it, we we’re sitting at our kitchen island in Kansas City typing in our credit card information.
We had no other plans at this point. We just purchased a random two week tour to Thailand in August. No flights, no idea for the house we lived in, no thought to tell our work, nothing. We kept the excitement to ourselves for a few weeks and then spilled the beans to our family and friends. It still didn’t feel real after booking it, just another daydream.
In May, we purchased our one way flights to Bangkok and kept growing this little idea of ours. A week after that, I found an awesome property manager who thought my house would be a perfect Midterm Rental. She gave me a list of things to do to get it ready and before I knew it, it was listed in June.
So I know of a place if you’re ever staying in Kansas City!
Around this time, our friends, Annie and Andrew, had told us about a book, Die With Zero by Bill Perkins. The book goes into detail about how we’ve all been taught to get a job, work 40+ years, save our money, put it into a 401k, and then hope we make it to the age of 65 when we can use that money we spent years working for. The point is to not die with thousands of unused dollars that we worked so hard for, use it all up, and die with zero. We were hooked on the book from the moment we started. We finished it during our road trip through California and it reassured us that we were making the right decision for ourselves.
By the middle of June, we gave our jobs a month notice since our little idea was now becoming a reality. That month flew by faster than I planned. I had been working as a Pediatric Nurse in Kansas City for the past three years and recently found a job within the hospital that I truly enjoyed. Nursing has always been a tough job. We are underpaid, underappreciated, and overworked emotionally and physically. When you find a job where the people around you outweigh that shit in nursing, it’s hard to leave. Thankfully, they sent me off with lots of support!
Our last day of work was July 21st, 2023. We had an entire week in Kansas City that consisted of packing up items we needed, spending an immense amount of time with our friends, hosting one final bonfire at our home, and getting the house ready for our first guest! After lots of hugs and tears that week, we headed back home to Iowa in our loaded-down Prius.
We spent the first half of August with our parents, siblings, and friends before the big travel day. It felt like being home during Christmas break from college with absolutely no commitments. It was pure bliss. During this time, we got some wedding plans figured out as well - I never mentioned we’re doing all this and planning a wedding for next year. Yes - we are psycho! I’m sure there will be a post down the road titled “why you should never plan a wedding while traveling the world”. I’ll be sure to link it when that day comes.
As it always does, our time in Iowa came and went. My dad and stepmom drove us to Chicago the night before our flights where we got to indulge in some deep dish pizza - something I haven’t yet found in Thailand. The next morning we ate a good breakfast, squeezed everyone tight, and my dad dropped us off at O’Hare with only our carry on bags!
Thanks Bill Perkins for writing such a lovely book that helped guide us to this point and an even bigger thank you to our parents for all their love & support while we explore this beautiful world!
