Welcome to another week of life on the road. I’m Genie Leslie, a freelance writer working remotely and traveling the country with my husband.
This week, we’re in Oxford, MS, enjoying time with family and the calm before the storm (see below).
We’ve decided on Atlanta. We know we are going to move there. We have an Airbnb lined up so that we can have a furnished place to live while we search for an apartment.
And yet, we’re not there yet.
Our entire process this last year and a half has been to book our next Airbnb about 2-3 months ahead of when we’ll be there. This has been great for securing a place and making a bit of a plan, without having too much too far in the future locked in with no flexibility. And if we waited any later than two months ahead, the Airbnb options for a place that met our criteria and was available for the whole month were significantly reduced. It was the perfect way to book.
Until it was time to stop traveling.
In December, we were pretty positive that Raleigh, North Carolina was where we’d end up. We’d loved Durham but it felt a bit small, and Raleigh was 30 minutes away and twice the size. We felt good about it. So we booked a February Airbnb for Raleigh, intended to be our furnished home base while we searched for a rental.
And then we went to Atlanta, and realized that was where we really wanted to be. For the city, the cost of living, the cute neighborhoods, the filmmaking community—all of it. This was going to be our new hometown.
But we still had a Raleigh Airbnb booked. And we were past the point of being able to cancel and get a full refund.
We briefly discussed if it would be worth cancelling anyway and just losing that money, but we decided it wouldn’t. We’re both still looking for work, so that cost would hurt. And we liked the idea of giving Raleigh a longer visit (since we’d only seen it on day trips from Durham) to see if it was going to change our minds back at all.
The new plan was formed: Go to Raleigh for February, make a brief stop back in Oxford for a family get-together, and then head to our new city in early March.
Which is exactly what we’ve done. But it’s felt weird.
If you’ve ever moved to a new city, you know that the period right before, weeks or months, can feel like you’re stuck in a holding pattern. You know a lot of the things you have to do, but it’s not quite time to do them yet. That’s how we feel right now.
We know we need to find an apartment or house to rent. And while we can certainly start looking online, we know physically seeing the street and neighborhood is going to be a big part of our decision making.
We know we need to clean out our storage unit and move everything in it from Washington to Georgia. But we can’t make those plans, or choose those dates, or book a long-distance moving truck, until we know we have a place to send it to.
Meanwhile, we’re in Raleigh and still looking for work, so we’re not trying to spend a ton of money, which means we’re not getting out that much.
Which leaves us kind of in a holding pattern.
On some days, that’s great. I don’t have to feel bad about just checking in on a couple of potential jobs or freelance gigs, then watching a couple episodes of Home Town (I’m back to binging it again), reading (I’ve read so many books), and working on my own script writing.
On other days, it can feel more like we’re stuck and we should be doing something, something more that we’re not doing (thank you, anxiety brain). What is that? I don’t know.
I try to remind myself that this is just another resting month, much like we did last summer in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania. It’s okay to rest! Why is this so hard to understand? I know it intellectually but man, sometimes I really don’t feel it.
We have gotten out a little bit and, the good thing is, we’re more confident in our Atlanta decision than ever. Raleigh would not have been the place for us, and I’m glad we found somewhere else we liked before landing here thinking it was final and then scrambling to make a change.
In some ways, I’m ready to move on from here. Get to Atlanta and start the process of moving. But it’s also going to be a bit overwhelming, with the eventual travel back to Seattle for moving things out and all the logistics of getting our stuff across the country. This slow time isn’t going to last much longer, and I want to enjoy it while we have it.
Excuse me, then, while I go back to reading. I’ve got another book to finish.
UPDATE
If there’s one thing we’ve learned, in life but especially in the last 18 months, it’s that nothing stays the same. There’s always a change on the horizon, and any time I worry about feeling stuck, something somewhere comes along to push things in a new direction.
I wrote this whole piece and was prepared to publish it, and then of course, things changed. Leave it to me to spend a good chunk of my downtime feeling anxious about being productive, only to suddenly find myself without downtime anymore.
It’s all good stuff though. I’ve gotten a freelance gig that should last two months at least. In typical freelance fashion, it went from “an introduction to the resourcing people at an Atlanta agency in hopes of a useful future connection” to “we need a copywriter now, can you start Monday?” in about 24 hours.
Meanwhile, we’re back in Oxford for a week because my former high school is doing a production of a play my sister wrote, so we’re here to support her and see the performances. We’d planned to travel to Oxford mid-week, but since I suddenly had work potentially starting, we decided to come early and get the long drive taken care of on the weekend instead.
And of course, I’ve also started a workshop with the goal of getting a draft of my latest script completed in the next 8 weeks. I signed up for this with only unemployment on the horizon, so I might have to adjust my goals and expectations for the script now that I’m working full time. But truthfully, I think I’ve gotten more writing done at times when I’ve been busy and had to be really specific and intentional about my writing time than when I’be been unemployed with all the time in the world. So maybe I’ll still write a full draft. I hope so.
We’ll also be apartment/house hunting during this time as well. But hey, the nice thing about one of us being out of work is that Aaron could go check things out during the day and send me photos or videos if needed.
Either way, this first week is bound to be a bit wild as I’m starting a new gig while staying at my mom’s house with my sister in town. And there’s nothing I can do but take it one day at a time. (Has this post just turned into me talking myself through anxious feelings about going back to work?)
Excuse me while I take a few deep breaths and sneak a few pages of reading in before my first work meeting.
What else is going on?
As I mentioned, I’ve been reading a lot. So here a few books that I really enjoyed recently:
We finally saw Asheville, North Carolina, a city that several people have told us we should consider as a place to live. We were only there briefly—it was our overnight stop between Raleigh and Oxford—but honestly, it just seemed like a big college town? I’m sure at some point we’ll be able to spend more time there but, for now, I think we’re fine with keeping it off the list.