The Ultimate Road Trip: Marriage Edition – When The End Is Just Another Beginning

No, we aren’t ending our marriage.

But we also aren’t ending the road trip.

We are now starting the exact same number of years that we’ve just completed. Instead of starting our final year, we’re starting the next (and hopefully, final) four years. This decision has come with a lot of exhaustion, discussion, some disagreement, anxiety (mostly mine) and more.

Just like everyone else we’ve had a challenging 18-24 months during the COVID-19 pandemic. Have we been more fortunate than most? Yes, absolutely. But have we still had our unique challenges both on the road and in our marriage? Again… yes, absolutely.

Maybe you noticed (and maybe you didn’t LOL) that I, Shae, haven’t posted as much here on the blog. This was unintentional at first and then intentional. It all just became too much. During 2020 the influx of learners to the online platform I teach on grew exponentially and I was teaching 5-6 days a week several classes each day. This was great in some ways and not so great in others.

We were determined to alter our road trip to account for the pandemic but still do as much of it as safely as we could… and in that vein I was going to museums as they reopened to bring content to my learners trapped at home by the virus and quarantine. So, while many of my learners were at home, I was out with (and without) Stephen going to get content and taking advantage of safer outside activities. In addition to teaching a ton, that meant I was getting content for The Traveling Teach classes which take between 4-8 hours to prepare depending on the location.

Didn’t I make more money in 2020 though? Yup, just enough to cover that super fun gallbladder surgery I ended up having in October of this year.

All that is to say that by the time it came to July 2020 and time for the marriage update post (that I decided to write every 6 months) I was already in the early stages of burn out. So I put it off, day after day, week after week.

If you know about my journey with anxiety, you probably know that when I say I thought about it each day, I mean it. Because my brain won’t always let me do anything different. Its loud, anxious ramblings begin with “you’re not pulling your weight, you didn’t do what you said you’d do, you started and quit another thing, people will notice and be disappointed, people won’t notice because what you write doesn’t really matter, you still haven’t written it yet, it’s now August so it’s too late you should probably just do it again in January…” And on and on.

By the end of 2020 I knew that I couldn’t keep up with the pace of teaching and content gathering for NHJR. I also couldn’t keep up with any of the other goals/roles I’d set for myself. I started and stopped a job at Outschool (I decided I’d rather work with young people with my finite hours rather than do admin work – no matter how good the pay was). I’ve been the pet travel correspondent for a friend and founder of a pet magazine for a few years and I woefully dropped the ball on that again and again. I love taking pictures and doing photography and didn’t have the energy to keep up with the edits of those, so I have thousands of beautiful images just sitting there; as a result we didn’t get the NHJR calendars available in 2020 (or 2021). I was taking classes for children’s writing because I have stories in me to share. I had/have dreams of growing my own business for The Traveling Teach and of course the usual stuff like being a dog mom, wife, daughter and friend.

I decided to drop back to the “bare minimum” after a great bout of therapy at the end of 2020. I also decided to see if, after 8 years, I could get off my anxiety medication by using CBD oil and healthy habits to control my anxious thoughts at the start of 2021. I was going to let go of anything superfluous and just narrow the focus to the best of me. I stopped writing on NHJR intentionally at that time (after a discussion with Stephen), I cut my classes back and focused on Geography and Virtual Field Trips, I started a teen travel podcast and dropped my photography/website and story writing classes and critique group. I wrote just one article all year for the pet magazine.

It all seemed fine until it wasn’t. Getting off my medication turned horribly wrong. I was so anxious, and angry, all the time. Stephen was tasked with helping me see these behaviors that I might not see in myself and so when he agreed that I probably needed to go back on my medication I listened. Please know that I’m not anti-meds – everyone likes to use the example of how if you broke your arm and needed a cast no one would begrudge you that so just because mental health issues are “invisible” doesn’t mean they don’t also need medication.

I completely agree. I also agree that if you never take your cast off, your arm will eventually atrophy and so there comes a time when you see if your arm is fixed enough through PT and more to go it alone without the cast. I decided that I’d never know if I still needed my medication if I didn’t ever stop it; but with the full awareness that I might need medication long-term and was open to going back on it if needed.

So the first 4-5 months of 2021 were really rough. After getting back on my medication things stabilized and improved, but I’m still showing signs of burnout from teaching and the road trip lifestyle we’ve had for 4 years. I’m also wired to want to grow and help others (particularly young people) which isn’t being met through my current teaching model, so I want to do more things that might impact on the road trip and take me away a little more often. Which is no bad thing when you’ve been in the same car and hotel-sized space for 4 years with your spouse.

But, you see I’m not the only one who has changed over the last 4 years. Stephen has grown his own business over the last 3 years and it takes a lot of his time. He wasn’t anticipating this when we started on the road trip, or even when he started GC Galore, but here we are. And he really enjoys it. He has a large community of people in the travel, points and deals world that he communicates with and from whom he gains praise and recognition. The unselfish part of me loves that for him. The much larger, very selfish, part of me doesn’t like how little time and attention we get from him as a result of late hours and early mornings. The nature of the deals world is getting the info out there first to be shared or to take advantage of them. So much of his attention is split between time-zones, websites and deals groups.

We also both thought No Home Just Roam would be further along in its readership, audience, following, “fame” whatever you want to call it. Stephen is very good at plugging away at something methodically for little reward… me not so much. I can see some things that we might try to grow our website and audience but they also feel like “just another thing to do” to both of us.

As a result of all of this, we’ve had to have some heart to hearts over the last 6 months which will be resulting in some changes for us.

The first was for me to accept that in no way were we going to finish our road trip in 5 years or even 6 as we’ve been telling people for 4 years now. I’ve really struggled with the idea that we “failed” if we didn’t do what we set out to do – 5 years, 50 states – pandemic or not. We also really struggle with just staying in the US 24/7, so we’ve had some lovely international travel during that time too which has impacted on the timeline. I’m still working on accepting that life just is the way it is and it’s not a failure to pivot. So we’re on an 8 year – 50 state road trip now.

The second was for Stephen and I to both recognize that we need more downtime available if we’re going to work 20-50 hours a week on things like GC Galore, The Traveling Teach, etc. We can’t move every week or two, expect to see all the things, keep up with the workload and write about it all on NHJR. We’ve had some serendipitous moments going that route, but we’ve also had some Connecticut and Odessa-Midland, TX moments that wasted precious time doing things in places we didn’t want to just for content. That being said, one state we thought we’d be able to move through quickly is Indiana and I’ve found a list of 41 interesting things to do there and honestly at least 30 of them are really good suggestions *face palm*. We’ll be trying to be more judicious about how long we stay in each state and which locations and activities are priorities, instead of the original goals of seeing the entirety of every single US state.

The third was for Truffles to have more stability as she ages. She’s still very spry and overall a very good girl, but she definitely lives her best life in hotels and Airbnbs with more than one room and those that are quieter. We, in turn, do the same – sleeping better and enjoying the experience more overall. Unfortunately, those are often more expensive in both money or points. As a result we’re trying to be more choosey about our hotel choices (particularly) and was one small factor in increasing our budget.

Finally, we will be going and doing what we need to when we need to without always being tied down to the road trip itself which is another reason we’re extending it. Stephen will go to points and miles conferences, we’re investigating invites to speak in person and remotely at travel-related conferences, we’ll make an effort to fly to see others more often since our friends and family can’t always come see us, I’m investigating a few educational-travel related ideas which I’ll share in the future if they go forward, and continue to grow our knowledge in our respective travel-related passions.

I know this is supposed to be a marriage update post. This is our update. We are still committed, 17.5 years later, to loving each other, growing together and separately on things that matter to us and supporting each other. He still squeezes the toothpaste wrong. I still load the dishwasher wrong. I still like wine before an aquarium. He still watches the budget like a hawk. We both are still enjoying seeing new and beautiful places together and sharing them with you through the NHJR blog. You’ll see some changes this year but only to bigger and better things for NHJR, The Peppers and Truffles as what we thought was coming to an end in 2022 is just another beginning.