There has been a map on the back of my bedroom door for two years now. I’ve circled the places on it that I know I want to visit. It’s not that I don’t want to visit the other places; it’s just that these states are definite.
My goal? To take a cross-country drive from New York down and around the bottom of the country, up the West Coast, and back across the top back home. I figured if I put the picture of the map here, my dream would become a little more real. My debt is pretty real too, but I’ll work on the road because as a freelance writer I can take my work anywhere. I’m lucky that way. My editors won’t know if I’m working from my home office or from a beach or in a car on Route 66. It’s been a dream of mine to live that kind of life for years. I didn’t want to go to college to be honest. I wanted to drive around and meet people, write about them, write scripts and move on.
Instead, I’m still — STILL! — paying off my student loans after stops and starts. Can I really do this? I’m a single mom with debt. I always wanted to do this in an RV too, but the older I get the more I wonder about that too. Yes, it’s a home on wheels, but so many RVers tell me how much money in gas they use, so I’m thinking that an inexpensive hotel would be better, or a friend’s couch for a night or two, right? I don’t want to have to take the RV to the store just for a gallon of milk. Plus, I’d either have to buy one or rent one, and that’s going to eat into the money that I’ll have from the ‘eventual’ sale of my home. Plus, if I do sell my home, I will still need to keep an apartment somewhere for my kids when they come home from college until they are out on their own. Can I do this? Can I really take this cross-country trip? I hope so. Honestly, even if I do it in sections, I’m GOING to do this.
This year, I’m going to focus locally — seeing things in my area that I haven’t had a chance to see — while I work and learn about RVs, Route 66, passports, and the like. If you’re reading fear in this post, there is some. Fear and excitement too. I’m working on overcoming the fear.
What about you RVers? Is it worth it? I have a few friends who are telling me no and they are selling their RV and others who wouldn’t live without it. What do you say?
