Six years in which we fully reintegrated into the everyday routine of working, eating, sleeping and kind of enjoying the weekend.
We noticed how P. and I (mostly P.) rushed through everyday’s life: Getting up at 6:00 h, leaving the house 6:20, starting work at 7:30 h and being back home at 18:30 h, going to bed at around 22:00 h, (P. needs his sleep to function properly 😊). And his family life? He complained more and more about not knowing what «his 3 girls” were up to.
We just seemed to fly through the weeks: if I’m or he was busy with one thing, we were mentally already preparing for the next one.
For five years P. worked as a Senior IT Technician and it was interesting. But the commuting part (90 minutes for 42 km mornings and evenings) took its toll, felt more and more like a waste of time. Netflix could not change that 😊. Couldn’t the time have spent more intelligently with the family and developing our many ideas?
We were facing a fundamental decision. For almost a year now P. had a bad feeling in his stomach, when the weekend was over, or he did think about work. A year ago, when we first talked about taking some time off, a real family time, just the 4 of us. Living the dream and travel with our kids as long as the saved-up money lasts.
Hadn’t we left everything behind once before? We need our serenity back and teach our kids to take it slow, living the dream and not just live/work for the dream. The kids are 9 and 11 years old, the time is now or never. They would not want to travel with us in 5-10 years from now. They will need to develop their own personality and take on their own life and dreams.
We've known for weeks/months that we must take the step. Just go to our respective supervisors and say: "I quit". Essentially, that’s what we did, and we stopped working on September 30th, 2019.
Why did we do it? Wouldn’t life be easier with a good salary? The luxury to be able to afford everything we needed, because money is available. Even being able to pay into the retirement fund at the end of the month. What about finding another work after 12 months on the road?
And yet, we quit, and we go on that trip around Europe spending our savings. We left steady jobs, and no one pays our pension, our insurance or our apartment.
Now, we have 3 weeks to prepare the car we just bought for this journey, free up the apartment and put the most important things into the car.
Europe here we come!