I stopped posting for a few weeks because I got a bad case of This-will-never-work-itis. Several issues factored in:
1. Money. Money, money, money. Why is sailing so damn expensive?
2. Pirates. I admit, all the recent craziness with the Somalian kids with guns and the cargo ships and the French sailboats and all that freaked us out a lot. We didn't really have grand plans to sail around the world anyway (not initially), but right now, piracy seems to be on the rise, and not just off Africa's coast. We've heard it's also becoming more of an issue in the Caribbean, too. If it were just the two of us, we'd probably do our best to avoid problem areas and not worry too much about it, but with a kid, the prospect of doing something that could put him into that kind of danger seems stupid.
Again - I realize this isn't a problem everywhere. Maybe we were watching too much CNN.
3. Getting back to money, it doesn't seem like a particularly smart way to spend it. Boats deteriorate, and so does everything associated with them.
4. We've been busting our butts to work and save money and pay down debt, and it's been stressful. We've made major progress on the credit card front, but sometimes the good paychecks don't seem worth the fact that I am essentially putting in 4-8 hours a day, 7 days a week. I haven't had a day off since January 7.
So we started tossing around ideas like buying a farm in Montana or taking a couple of months at a time to see the world via planes, trains, and automobiles. These dreams are pricey, too, but not *as* pricey as going on a 2-3 year sailing adventure. They're more reasonable. If we work hard, we are pretty sure we could make these things happen in 5 years or so.
Here's the problem, though: I can't muster much enthusiasm for these alternatives. They just don't seem exhilarating enough (we're weird). What I've realized in the past couple of days - and Trent, too - is that this is one crazy plan we have to pursue. I'm not sure if we'll be able to do it in five years. We may have to push it to 10 to save our sanity. But we want to sail.
* * *
On the credit card front, we're about 75% of the way to paying them off completely. As soon as that's done, we'll start ramping up payments on our student loans (which I'm beginning to think are even more cursed than the credit cards). We've managed to put some money into savings, though much of it may disappear in the next two months; Trent's computer shows signs of being close to the end, and he'll need a new one.
Sometimes I just wish I could look into the future and see what happens. Is all of this hard work worth it - or should we be slowing down and enjoying life more right now?
I'm reading! I took a break too, for my own reasons. I think that debt pay off goes like this: hard, easy, too easy, really hard again. You have to refocus and stay motivated. It's really hard to do that when you know it will take years to reach your goal. I think you guys know sailing is your dream... hang in there!
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