Because we’re in a fairly touristy town right now, one of the questions we’re often asked is, “Are you here on holiday?” At first, we always answered, “No, we live here.” After all, we did plan to stay in Malaysia for at least three months. We rented a house and a car, signed the girls up for art and Chinese classes and a community choir, and even made some friends we hung out with regularly. I work a little every day, and we homeschool the girls. So it’s not a vacation in the sense that most people think of it.

But since we’ve arrived in Penang, Malaysia, I’ve felt more like we’re on vacation than like we’re living here. It’s hard not to feel overwhelmed by the variety and magnitude of all that is around us. There are new foods to try, unique temples to visit, beautiful nature to enjoy, educational classes to enroll in, seasonal activities to participate in, cool friends to get to know better, interesting cultures to understand, and we want to do it all right now!

Coming from Costa Rica where the pace of life is slower, and there is simply less to do, Penang has been an exciting stimulation to all our senses. We partly expected it, but I think our excitement has caused us to try to do too much at once, and we’re feeling a bit tired and drained (or maybe that’s just because of the heat). This is a night town, too, where some restaurants don’t open until 7pm, and they stay open until two or three in the morning! So we often don’t get to bed until after midnight and we wake up late, which gives us the illusion of having shorter days. It’s an interesting cycle.

So right now, I feel like I just want to slow down, finish writing my book (or even just read a book), focus more on building my business, and relax with my family. I’ve made that a little more difficult than necessary by purchasing some extremely discounted AirAsia tickets to Singapore, Bali, and Japan for this Spring. Each of those trips is requiring more time for planning than I anticipated. I know they will be rich and rewarding experiences, and I’m trying to leave some things to spontaneity, such as any longer-term (7+ days) accommodations which we’d like to see in person before we commit to. But I don’t want to go unprepared, either.

We’ve also decided to not spend a full 3 months in Penang, but to spend our last month in Kuala Lumpur, renting an apartment there, if we can, and taking life a little slower. We’ll leave all the beautiful islands with crystal clear water and the nature of the Sabah/Borneo side of Malaysia for another time. Kuala Lumpur is a new city for us, though, full of fun activities and interesting sites. But we’ve decided that we’re not going to try to do them all. We’ll focus on a few highlights and the things that are most important to us, and take a lot of rest days in between. We’ll refocus on creative education (for example, we’ve enrolled the kids in a 5-day children’s technology workshop), and maybe I’ll finally even get some time to work on my book.

Vacations are great. But sometimes I just want to “live.”

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Share and Enjoy

Now that we’ve made the move abroad, my businesses are more automated than ever, and I’m more used to my 4-hour workweek lifestyle, I wanted to do it again and see how things have changed. I’ll share the results with you here.

A lot of people seem to think that if you only have to work a few hours per week, you must be spending the rest of your time relaxing in a hammock drinking piña coladas. I mean, what else is there to do? Actually, everything!

I do spend my fair share of time relaxing, being with family and friends, and even doing “nothing”. But I can’t do “nothing” for very long before I get restless and want to do something more productive. I’ve found that tracking my time really helps me be aware of what I’m doing in the moment, and feel less pressured doing tasks I don’t enjoy. I also realize that time will keep moving on, no matter what I do. As long as I’m enjoying life, growing, and helping others where I can, I feel like I’m living my life well.

Disclaimer: Even though I have these tasks recorded to the minute, they’re not always accurate to the minute. Sometimes I forgot to switch my timer right when I switched tasks, so had to modify it later with a little guess work. Being off by a few minutes for several things has led to being off by a couple hours overall. But it will have to do. For this exercise, I used SlimTimer, a free on-line time tracking tool.

Work Time

I define “work” as activities done specifically to help produce income. This week I “worked” a little more than usual because I was getting some video tutorials written for one product, and launched a special offer with another. I also planned some important new features to work on next. For me, it’s normal for this category to be under 5 hours per week total.

• Music Teacher’s Helper: 5 Hours, 18 minutes. This includes advertising/marketing (1:35), checking programmer’s work (1:30), customer support (0:48), and the rest in business planning, finances, and checking stats.
• Studio Helper: 2 hours, 1 minute. This includes working on video tutorials (1:27), business planning (24 min), and the rest dealing with feature requests and checking stats.
• Other: 33 minutes. This week, I started researching a new business idea, and that’s what this time was.

Total Work Hours: 7 Hours, 52 Minutes

Family Time

One of the things I like most about my lifestyle is that I have so much time to spend with my family. We’re together pretty much all day, even if we’re not doing the same thing. I’ve only included my personal time with my family here, so this doesn’t include the time my wife homeschools the kids, or the time they spend playing together. Driving them to their art class should probably be included here, but I put all driving under Personal.

• Playing with kids: 11 hours, 32 minutes. I try to play with my kids a little every day. A lot of this is computer or iPad games with one daughter while my wife is doing homeschool with the other one. But it also includes reading to them, playing hide and seek, “restaurant” and other imagination games.
• Watching Movies: 6 hours, 51 minutes. We watched a few movies with the kids this week, in the evenings, including the 1969 Doctor Dolittle, and Tarzan in Spanish.
• Family Outings: 5 hours, 15 minutes. This includes a little hike up the mountains behind our house, and a trip to the park to ride ponies and bicycles. We also spent time together with our friends, which I’ve included in the Personal: Visiting with Friends section.
• Talking with Jen: 3 hours, 56 minutes. Jen and I enjoy just sitting and talking, as well as reading together. We want to make even more time for it this coming week.

Total Family Time: 27 hours, 34 minutes

Personal Time

Even though it looks like I have a lot of time left over for myself, I don’t really feel like I have much “free time”. I guess that’s because I try to fill my time up with things that I like to do and am passionate about. I still have a full to-do list, and do spend time on things I’d rather not, but I try to work on the most important items first each day. Overall, I’m doing what I love with the majority of my time.

• Sleep: 57 hours, 21 minutes. That’s just over 8 hours per night. This week, we’ve been sleeping in a different room where the sun hits us warmly every morning around 6:30 through the windows. It’s not conducive to sleeping in, but is a very relaxing way to get up.
• Visiting with friends: 11 hours, 22 minutes. We had some friends over for a late lunch one day this week, and we spent an afternoon out with another friend.
• Meals: 11 hours, 2 minutes. We ate out a lot this week (almost every day), and took time to enjoy our food. The meal with our friends is included under “Visiting with friends”.
• Reading: 9 hours, 8 minutes. I have some really interesting books I’m reading right now, although half of this time was spent reading articles and blogs on-line.
• Personal Email: 8 hours, 13 minutes. I had a LOT more time-consuming e-mail than usual this week. I’ve been getting a lot of e-mails from people starting businesses who want advice. I’ve really enjoyed being able to help people in this regard. Maybe soon I will have to start charging for consulting and move this into the “Work” category. :)
• Writing: 4 hours, 31 minutes. This was time I spent working on my new book about how to create an on-line business. I suppose this could also be considered “Work” since I will eventually sell the book, but that’s not my main purpose in writing it.
• Daily Hygiene: 3 hours, 27 minutes. It’s amazing how much time this takes. But I do love a hot shower.
• Sex: 3 hours, 9 minutes. Ahh… Having a pregnant wife has some nice hormonal advantages.
• Meditating and spiritual time: 2 hours, 41 minutes. I have a great place to sit for my morning meditation overlooking the hills and the city view. Very relaxing.
• Finances: 2 hours, 3 minutes. This is higher than normal because I’ve been working a lot with my accountant trying to figure out taxes, and have been looking at other investment opportunities.
• Exercise: 1 hour, 47 minutes. This includes my daily stretching and tai chi, and a little weight lifting. This doesn’t include all the hiking and walking we did as a family this week.
• And I spent anywhere from 10 minutes to 1 hour, 30 minutes on each of the following: cleaning and organizing, house maintenance, driving, facebook, games (pool, and angry birds), journal, playing the piano, shopping, time tracking, vacation planning, writing on my blog, and selling stuff on Craigslist.

Total Personal Time: 128 hours, 52 minutes

Now that I’ve gone through all the effort of tracking my time for a week, it would be a shame to simply write a blog post about it and not use the data to see where I can improve. In the weeks ahead, I would like to make the following changes:

• More time with my wife, especially reading and talking with her.
• More family time together with the kids at home. We spend a lot of time together outside the home, but when we’re inside, we tend to do our own thing. I also want to take a more active role in homeschool, helping the kids with their blogs, music, as well as math and reading, etc.
• More time working on my book. I’m excited to complete this project and hopefully it will help a lot of people looking to create a business.
• Less time reading on-line. I want most of my reading time to be focused and intentional, not jumping from item to item.
• Less time on e-mail. I had built up a practice of checking e-mail just twice a day and leaving it alone the rest of the time. But I didn’t follow that so well this week, and found my productivity waver because of it.

Have you ever tracked your time? If you’ve ever charged per hour, chances are you’ve tracked your time working, but have you ever measured what you’re doing with the rest of your time? Yeah, maybe it is a bit fanatical. But I think there is value in it at least every once in a while.

I’m interested to hear your thoughts below, and what changes you’d like to make in how you spend your time.

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Share and Enjoy

A Time for Work

But I’ve had my share of stressful work-days as well, mostly due to self-imposed deadlines to try and get the design finished and launched before an upcoming music teachers conference. I’ve spent quite a bit of time lately pouring over the site, and continue to find more little things I’d like to tweak and improve, or small bugs that should be fixed. Then there’s all the copywriting to do.

Yes, I outsource most of my work, and could probably outsource more of it. I tried my hand at programming again this morning, and actually got quite frustrated with it. Maybe I’m just out of practice, but it sure wasn’t enjoyable like it used to be. I’m really glad to have two wonderful programmers helping me out there. I still enjoy writing, though, and no one knows my business as well as I do (yet), so I’m handling the copywriting for now.

So, what happened to the Brandon that only works 5 hours a week? Well, that’s still usually the case. But last week I worked almost 18 hours, and will probably be close to that this week as well. Work is always more enjoyable when you’re excited about what you’re doing, and can envision great results. And then I tend to do more of it…

However, I consider my greatest work the time I spend with my kids, much of it in “play”.

A Time For Play… and Learning

Play is most enjoyable for me when I just let it happen. We’ve had a lot of fun with our kids recently. We put together a foam Valentine’s house sent to us by Grandma Alli. Jen and the girls made caterpillars out of egg carton shells, and dolls & fairies out of cereal boxes and paper, which they seem to enjoy even more than store-bought toys. We’ve taken walks, ridden the bus to town, played computer games together, and even spotted some poisonous cane toads in our backyard!

One night during dinner, we were talking about how the house we’re living in would make a nice restaurant. The girls took the idea further and were getting excited about running their own restaurant. So after dinner, we decided to start one!

Playing Restaurant

We wrote up a menu and the girls decorated it. They got to choose all the dishes, which Emily insisted we write in both English and Spanish. The girls setup tables and chairs with table cloths and centerpieces. They brought out their stuffed animals to be the customers. And Emily and Marie each took turns being a customer as well as a waitress. Jen was the chef. And I was the manager (and a customer once). We had a great time, and I think the kids learned a lot as well. We all helped clean up when we “closed”.

One of these days, maybe we’ll make a nicer menu on the computer, add some prices, and help them learn to count the money. Play makes learning so much fun, especially when it’s driven by the kids. (Much better than memorizing facts you don’t care about for a test you’re being forced to take.)

Our Kids Are Bloggers

Emily and Marie each also have their own blog now. Emily is 6 years old and is typing all of the posts herself. She uses the built-in spell checker in Firefox and also asks us for help when needed. Marie’s blog just launched, so she doesn’t have any posts yet, but will have one soon. She’s 4 years old and will be dictating her posts to us until she wants to type them. Their blog addresses are:

www.emilyinthejungle.com – Emily

www.ridingabutterfly.com – Marie

If you feel so inclined, go ahead and leave them a comment. I’m sure they’d love to hear from you.

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Share and Enjoy

I have been working a lot more the past week or so on my business, because it’s the busy season right now for music teachers. Teachers everywhere are thinking about scheduling and getting their studio ready for the coming school year. So I’ve been doing a lot of marketing, sending out special offers, purchasing banner ad space and e-mail blasts, and more. It already looks like it’s starting to pay off, so that’s good.

Despite the fact that I’ve been working more (I clocked 23 hours last week!), it seems like we’ve been spending more time together as a family, too. Here’s a list of some of the things we did this week:

• Played board games, including a word/spelling game, checkers, and more.
• Played croquet in the back yard (Well, Marie got tired of it, but Emily played)
• Played imaginary games with stuffed animals
• Went to Gardner Village, rode ponies, and enjoyed the petting zoo.
• Played catch with a big purple ball – in the living room!
• Went to the library and read books to the kids
• Watched a movie together – in Spanish! (Tarzan 2)
• Went bowling, then out to dinner at Applebee’s, then grocery shopping
• Ate every meal together (except breakfast)

I’m sure I’m forgetting some things, but it’s been a fun week. Jen and I have also been reading together for about 1-2 hours each day, about education and family, and have had some interesting discussions both in the afternoon, and at night before bed.

So, now that we’ve figured out how to have fun as a family even when we’re not out of the country, does this mean we’re going to stay here forever? Not a chance! In fact, we’ve already decided where we want to go on our next international trip, and we’re planning on living there for at least 6 months, starting in January. We may even take a shorter trip there next month to scout out a place to rent. We’ve spent quite a bit of time looking into it this week. I’m not going to share where we’re going quite yet, but will spill the beans as soon as we have a few more of the details worked out. We’re getting excited!

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Share and Enjoy

The first few days at home were wonderful, and we still had what we feel was a healthier mindset. We were still productive, we were happy, and we loved being together. We adored our kids, and always had time for them. We didn’t realize what we had been missing all along until we experienced this – it’s hard to describe how much closer we became being together in Panama. But after a week or two (10 days now) of being home, we feel an immense pull from all our commitments, and with so many distractions, we have found it very difficult to stay in that mindset.

Even though I work from home, it doesn’t seem that we’re spending much time together, and when we are, we don’t feel as close – like we’re too busy with things we “have to do” that we forget what’s really important. We have even become short-tempered and impatient with our kids again – emotions that we just didn’t have much on our trip. Interesting, isn’t it?

An Onslaught of Commitments

We had virtually no responsibilities or commitments while we were on our trip. I still had to run my business, but I could do that on my own time, and I made sure I limited myself to just a few hours a day. Since coming back, however, I’ve had a lot more going on – much of which has been very good, but it’s kept me busy.

For example, in the past ten days, I’ve had two lunch appointments (one for business, one with an old friend), several scheduled business phone calls, tai chi classes, Toastmasters meetings, church meetings (including a fun talent show that I performed in, and responsibilities with my calling), Oratorio Society of Utah rehearsals (which required a lot of piano practice since I accompanied this week), house maintenance (see my last post), a lot of e-mails to answer, programmers’ code to review, and I migrated my music teacher website to a new server to meet growing demands for performance.

The girls have had preschool and dance classes. Jen has been busy taking care of things at home, cooking, cleaning (a bigger deal when you have a bigger place), laundry, entertaining visitors, grocery shopping, doctor’s appointments, visiting teaching, babysitting other people’s kids and babies, and a lot more.

With all of these things going on (and I’m sure this list looks mild compared to some families), we have found it difficult to find time to spend together or with our kids. For example, we have been wanting to go to the “Frog” exhibit that just opened at the Natural History museum, but so far, haven’t found a single day free to go do it! We finally had a couple hours open Saturday, so took the girls to the park, which was fun. But it’s just not enough to keep the feeling of unity and love as strong as it was on our trip.

Is All This Really Necessary?

I’ve started to wonder which of the above commitments are truly necessary. Of course there are many of the above commitments we wouldn’t want to give up, especially ones relating to people we love. And of course there’s joy to be found in the self-improvement, service, and work-related commitments. But as I look at the list of what we’re busy doing, I wonder why so much of it has to occur outside of the family. Isn’t the purpose of family to teach us “self-improvement, service, and work”, and to make us better people? Are we neglecting our most important and rewarding responsibilities by bringing so much else into our lives? I’m starting to feel like some of these things are just distractions, taking me away from what I value most.

Is it really a requirement to do so much all the time, in so many different areas of life? Does it really take going to another country, away from everything, to experience a strong feeling of family unity? Is it really unrealistic to have that kind of feeling in our fast-paced society? Can I really avoid getting sucked in to all that’s going on around me? I experienced a special feeling with my family in Panama (and even a bit after we returned), and I want it back again.

I wonder what life was like in the days of Adam and Eve, when there were no governments, schools, law, or even churches – when family and the law of God was all there was. We’re told that the main reason Jesus Christ even established a church was to help fathers and mothers teach and take care of their families. Families truly are central to God’s plan for His children. (See The Family: A Proclamation to the World). Are families central in our lives?

The Power of Less

A few days ago, I checked out a book at the library called “The Power of LESS” by Leo Babauta, author of the popular Zen Habits blog – one of my favorite blogs. I have hardly been able to put the book down, and I highly recommend it to anyone trying to simplify their life or get more done (especially important things). The basic idea of the book is that you can be happier and more productive by eliminating the non-essential from your life, and doing/keeping only the essential. Yeah, a simple idea – but very profound when applied.

I certainly found this true in Panama. When we focused on what was most important (our family), and let almost everything else go out the window, we were much, much happier. I’m not saying that we should take our families and go and live like hermits, shutting out anything but each other. But there has to be a better balance than what I’m currently experiencing.

Finding the Balance

How do I find this balance again? Should I take my family on another 6 week trip? Or how about a year or more? Or maybe I should just start to cut some of the clutter out of my life as it is now, making sure I reserve time every day and every week for my family. Maybe we can have a “Family Day” a few times a week, and try to keep out other appointments and commitments on those days. Maybe I can allot specific hours of every day to spend with my kids, and make sure I leave my computer off during those times. But then I think, “How can I possibly get everything done if I do that?” Then again, do I really need to get “everything” done? What’s truly essential?

How do you find time to be with your family among all the pressures of life? And do you feel like it’s enough time? Do you feel as close in your family as you want to be? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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Share and Enjoy

This time, however, we really felt rejuvenated, and have a renewed energy to get back into life. I didn’t have a big pile of things to do because I’d been taking care of the important ones while I was gone. And I realized that most of the things I thought I needed to do so urgently, really weren’t urgent, and that much of my to-do list could just be wiped out without any major effects.

What’s More Important Than Family?

Before I left, I seemed to base much of my happiness on how much I got “done”, and how well I cleared my to-do list. I would work to accomplish what I had planned to do, at the expense of enjoying time with my family, even if the things on my list weren’t very important. In fact, I often didn’t enjoy time spent with my family because I was worrying about the other things I hadn’t accomplished. Pretty sad, isn’t it? I hope I can remember this lesson, and put my family first. It makes life a lot more enjoyable. Who cares how much I do if I’m not enjoying the more important areas in my life?

It’s also much easier to and more enjoyable to deal with kids if you can give them your main focus and play with them, rather than trying to accomplish something on your own while expecting them to entertain themselves. Yes, this takes time and commitment! But what better way can you spend your time?

The day we came back was a busy day that normally would have been a bit stressful. Emily and Marie had both preschool and dance classes, we needed to go shopping for food, and I had some unfinished business to catch up on. But we had a great day and almost no stress! Yes, we ate out for two meals and didn’t get to the store, but we were okay with that! Jen and I enjoyed our date while the girls were at preschool, and we even went to a children’s musical theater that night (“Honk Jr.”) in which my dad had directed the music. What a fun day!

I accomplished what I needed to do that morning (and a little bit in the evening), and spent the rest of the day with my family – just like when we were on our trip. I’ve lived like this for the past six weeks – why shouldn’t I be able to continue doing so? Do I really need to be working or focusing on my own interests for eight hours a day?

Productivity vs. “Wasting” Time

Just being home for a few days now, I already feel a pull to go back to my old habits of working hard to be productive, and to get as much done as possible each day. Productivity is great, but I’m realizing that I was placing too much emphasis on it. I am a naturally productive person. I have trained myself not to “waste time” and to make sure whatever I’m doing is bringing me closer to my goals.

What I’ve learned on this trip, however, is that “wasting time” is often necessary to truly rejuvenate, clear your mind, and connect with yourself and others. Sometimes it’s more important to “do nothing” than to get something accomplished.

How Blessed We Are!

I didn’t think six weeks would be long enough to forget so much about what life is like at home. But we were amazed when we walked into our house because it looked so clean, and new and nice! Even though it’s just an average home around here, comparing it to where we came from, where they have a different standard of “nice” and “clean”, we were blown away. Our home seems so comfortable, is always the perfect temperature inside because of central air and heating. We have soft carpet instead of hard tile (except in the kitchen), comfortable couches to lay down on, and pure water to drink from the faucet. How blessed we are!

The streets and stores of Salt Lake City are also extremely clean (comparatively). In Panama, we got used to seeing more garbage on the side of the road, run-down or abandoned buildings, and lots of pedestrians. But everything here is very clean, new, orderly, and people generally follow traffic rules. How nice! :) (I do see a lot more sloppy dress here, though. Interestingly, Panamanians generally dress really sharp.)

We’re very happy to be home, to see family and friends again, and to be enjoying the comforts of a 1st world country.

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Share and Enjoy

I’ve always loved the idea of automation. I remember when I was about twelve years old, I loved dreaming about how, in the “future”, we’d simply press a button, and we’d have our food. We’d press another button, and we’d be dressed. We’d press another button and we’d be clear across the world. Well, that hasn’t really happened, and arguments could be made about why these wouldn’t necessarily be good things. (Note: I just saw “Wall-E” for the first time yesterday, and had to laugh. Yes, pushing buttons all day would probably just make us all fat!)

While constant and never-ending leisure wouldn’t make for a very fulfilling life, I still like the idea of “minimal effort, maximum result” – leverage – mainly because it frees up our time to do things that are more meaningful to us (if we choose to). 

I’m not one to say that every moment of our lives should be spent only on activities that we deem “most important”, just as it all shouldn’t be spent on leisure. We need regular periods of work and stress, as well as periods of renewal – physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually – in order to keep happy and healthy.

And I believe that value and enjoyment can even be found even in the “mundane” things of life, such as daily hygiene, getting from one place to another, preparing food (some people really enjoy this), or working at a repetitive task. This all depends on our attitude. Are we grateful for what we have? Even still, I find my greatest fulfillment in working toward accomplishing some goal, and eliminating as much mindless or unproductive repetition as possible.

Endless Possibilities

As a child, my only aspirations for a career centered around becoming either a music teacher or a computer programmer, both of which I’ve done to some degree. But after a while, my eyes started to open up to other possibilities. I realized that there really are no limits to where we can set our sites. And I began asking myself some questions, which you may want to ask yourself as well.

What would you do if you had all the time and money you could ever want? Would you travel the world with your family? Would you buy mansions and yachts and play all day? Would you move to the country and live a simpler life? Would you fight poverty and hunger? Start foundations to preserve peace or protect the environment? Would you improve your talents or skills? Learn to play an instrument or paint or build something?  Increase your knowledge in an area of interest to you? Invent something? Run for political office? Spend more time serving neighbors and friends? Would you teach others? Would you serve a mission?  Would you do a combination of all these things?

Again, if you didn’t have to work 8 hours a day to make a living, and had time to pursue whatever you wanted, what would change? Or would you choose to do the same things you’re doing now?

This is a personal question and everyone’s answer will be different. I still don’t fully know my own answer, but it’s beginning to form.  I certainly don’t have an unlimited supply of time and money, but I have begun to realize that you really don’t need it, in order to begin accomplishing what’s most important to you. And even better, if you focus on doing what you feel most driven to do based on your values, time and money will take care of themselves, or at least, they won’t matter as much to you.

Gratitude and Persistence

I feel so grateful for what I have been given, in so many areas of my life. It seems much more than I deserve. I want to make the best of what’s been allotted to me –  living my life to the fullest – not wasting it, but putting it to good use in ways that bless others as well as myself. It’s a constant learning process, and I feel like I’m just at the beginning. And who knows what the future will bring? So right now, I’m taking advantage of opportunities while they’re available to me, and giving my family an experience we’ve been dreaming about. 

So, let me ask you – if there is something you want to accomplish in life, are you taking steps to accomplish it now? If not, ask yourself why. Determine what the next step would be for you, and do it! Then take the next step, and keep moving. Persistence does pay off.

P.S.  Speaking of work/renewal cycles, I have to promote another great book. Check out ”The Power of Full Engagement” by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz. It talks about the importance of these and other cycles in our lives (among other things). For example, how we work so much more productively if we take regular breaks throughout the day, where we completely separate, mentally and physically, and in all other areas, from work. Then when we come back, we’re more refreshed, and have more energy to enjoy the rest of the day. And how pre-determined routines can help you reach your goals. It’s one of the best books I’ve read in a long time.

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Share and Enjoy

In short, we think a trip like this will help us be more happy, well-rounded people, and grow closer together as a family. Could we become more happy, well-rounded and close without leaving home? Probably. So why take the trip? This was the debate that went on in my mind for some time.

I made a long list of concerns and benefits and pondered them for days. But after discussing this list with Jen, she simply said, “You don’t even know if any of your benefits or concerns are valid until you get there and try it out.” And since we were both in the mood for a change and an adventure, we decided to take the opportunity while we had it!

Now, this trip didn’t initially start out as a plan to take a six week vacation somewhere in the world. We wanted to experience “living” somewhere with a contrasting culture, a different language, and different geography. We wanted to broaden our horizons, and escape the monotony we were feeling in our every day lives. We wanted to get out of our comfort zones to learn and explore, and grow.

But I guess we’re not the ultimate in adventurousness, because we didn’t just pack our bags, sell our house and move somewhere we’ve never been. We’re making it a relatively short stay, but long enough to see what it’s like to live somewhere else.

Now hold on! I’m not saying that our goal is to move to a foreign country to live our the rest of our lives – although I guess I’m not ruling that out either. We just want to see what else is out there! We want to give our kids the chance to see what people and cultures are like in other parts of the world.  We want to learn new languages, meet new people, and take life at a slower and more relaxed pace than is common here in the US. And this is probably not the first of this kind of trip we’ll be taking.

Mark Twain said:

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Our past vacations have been so much of rushing from one sight to the next, having every minute planned out in our on-line itinerary (since I’m that type of guy). I’m trying to make this trip different, but am finding it difficult to not plan at least one activity every day.

My greatest fear with this trip is that we’ll go and nothing will change. I’ll continue working on my laptop as I do at home, not able to get away from e-mail and other tasks (either mentally or physically), neglecting play time with my children, and not being focused on rejuvenation, personal growth, and loving every minute of whatever I’m doing. That is my challenge.

I’m hoping to use this trip as a catalyst for positive changes in my life, and in my thinking. I believe that such a dramatic change in scenery and activities will be effective in turning me off to my normal world of constant task-oriented productivity, and give me more reason to focus on times of quiet pondering, gratitude, family, God, and other areas of life that I consider more important than “working” for money. If it doesn’t work, then at least we’ll have lots of fun. :)

Share and Enjoy

Share and Enjoy