Going Where We Want, When We Want

Kim and I had an argument yesterday. Kim said we had too much to do and she wanted to postpone our departure date until Thursday. A little later, she suggested we wait until Friday to leave.

I was very reluctant to change our departure date. We already are a week-and-a-half behind our original schedule and I didn’t want to change our departure date yet again. I dug in my heels and said that I didn’t want to leave any later than we were already leaving.

Then Kim said something that struck a chord with me. She said, “The only reason we are supposed to leave Wednesday is because we decided we were going to leave Wednesday. Since we made that decision, why can’t we just decide to leave later?” She paused for a second, either to gather her thoughts or for dramatic effect. I’m not sure which. “This is our trip and we should be able to make the decisions about where we go and when we go.”

Kim was right. This cross-country RV extravaganza isn’t about keeping to an arbitrary schedule. One of the beauties of traveling in an RV is that you can go where you want, when you want. You’re not shackled by a pre-determined itinerary or airline schedules or even what you wanted to do a month ago. You’re free to do the things you want to do right now. I had kind of lost track of this fact.

So our new “schedule” calls for us to leave on Thursday or Friday of this week instead of Wednesday. This will allow us to spread out the things we still have to get done before we leave. We won’t have to kill ourselves to get ready. We can get things done in a more relaxed fashion.

And that’s another thing this trip is supposed to be about. We are supposed to relax and unwind. The trip is supposed to be enjoyable, not a race to the finish. So from now on (at least as much as I can) we will go where we want to go and we will go when we want to go. We will relax, unwind, and enjoy the journey.

This is our motto for today. Of course, it is subject to change without notice. If we’re going to be free to do what we want to do, then I am free to stick to an arbitrary schedule if I want, right?