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 Atlanta, enjoying real winter temperatures combined with bright southern sunshine.
Wow. What to write about after more than a month of not checking in?
In some ways, the month of December really felt like an extension of November—more family time around the holidays, more socializing, less writing (clearly). But it had its own specific moments, too.
For the first week that we were back at my mom’s house in Oxford, Mississippi, there were two goals for me. First, finish up my last week on my contract and make sure my teams were set up for success and a seamless transition after my exit. And second, help my mom transform an office into a new guest room.
We spent a full week, a Monday to a Monday, working on this bedroom. There were several steps involved, including breaking down a 40-year-old sofa bed, cleaning out and consolidating two file cabinets, cleaning out and moving a desk, and cleaning out and re-organizing a closet. There were also things that didn’t absolutely HAVE to happen, but needed to happen; for example, we were swapping out a shelving unit from the office into the utility closet, which led to fully cleaning out and re-organizing the utility closet. My mom is very pleased with the result, which is wonderful, but it definitely took a lot to get us there. I don’t think we saw any friends that first week because we were just so exhausted at the end of each day.
After this, of course, we were well into holiday time. We put up the tree and my mom’s Santa collection. I crocheted three decorations (see picture above). We shopped for gifts and had wrapping parties on the floor of the den. Aaron and I left town for a few days to visit both of his parents a couple of hours south. We drove to Memphis to pick up my sister and her boyfriend when they arrived from Los Angeles. And after Christmas, we were pleasantly surprised with an invitation to extend our stay a couple of days and stay at a friend’s lakefront cabin to celebrate the new year.
Which is all to say, it’s January 4 as I write this and I just feel like I’m getting my brain back to the real world.
And it’s strange to think about getting back to the “real” world when we’re both unemployed.
I haven’t really written about this much yet, but it’s true. As previously mentioned, my contract ended on December 15. I knew it was coming; this wasn’t a surprise. The company I was working with has a limit on how long you can contract at one time, and I hit that limit at 18 months. (They’ve actually reduced that limit down to 12 months, but I was granted an exception to finish out my time because both the policy was so new and there was no one immediately available to take over my workload.)
As for Aaron, his company (Amazon) was pushing for a return to office and, of course, we weren’t moving back to Seattle. It’s silly, really; he’s been remote since 2020 and for the job he was doing most recently, he’d never been in the office at all. How would going back in make him, make anyone, more productive? Anyway, I won’t dig into all the ways I think that rolling back remote work is a mistake, but it is. Suffice it to say, Aaron knew this change was coming for a few months before it went into effect, so we were prepared for that too.
Over a year ago, I wrote about how we could afford to travel like this, and I thought now would be a good time to follow up. At that time, I was working 20 hours a week at an hourly rate that covered my side of the expenses, and Aaron was working steadily for his salaried job. In January of 2023, my contract was renewed at 40 hours a week instead of 20. This meant that, since expenses had already been covered, we could save a lot each month. And so we did. We did let a few expenses creep up a little bit (looking at you, Airbnb costs), but overall, we just set aside the extra income for the rainy days that we knew would eventually come.
Aaron’s job ended mid-October. At that point, we switched from saving my extra income to using it, supporting ourselves on my income alone, without dipping into savings. That covered us for November and December. Now, with both of us out of work, we’ll start to use that cushion we’ve built up.
This is my main financial goal as a freelancer: to set aside money during the high seasons so I’ll be prepared and covered during the low seasons. The last year and a half was a high season for work. Now we’re in a low season. If we’d spent all that extra income as it came in, we’d be in a very precarious position right now. But we’re not. We have time to find work. Any freelance work I pick up will help stretch the time before we have to dip into savings.
I’m not stressed, so I hope you aren’t either (we fielded a few raised eyebrows and stressed questions from family members over the holiday break). I’ll be reaching out to my network for freelance gigs and opportunities soon, and in the meantime, I’m trying to relax, write, read, and crochet. It’s hard to do, and it’s something I’ve struggled a bit with as a freelancer—to truly relax into and enjoy the down times, trusting that they won’t last forever. We’re so conditioned that we’re supposed to be working all the time: working our paid jobs, working on our houses, working on our bodies, working on our side hustles. My goal for the month of January is to let that go as much as I can, and just pursue my hobbies and my writing with as much joy and as little pressure as possible.
P.S. In case you’re wondering where we stand, we do think our traveling lifestyle is going to wrap up here pretty soon. This is slightly motivated by the idea that it might be easier to find work if we’re stationary, and mostly motivated by the fact that we’re pretty tired and would like to spend more than a month in one place, at least for a while. More on this later!
P.P.S. Thank you for sticking with me and my fluctuating publishing schedule the last few weeks. I appreciate everyone who subscribes to and reads this newsletter, and I didn’t mean to leave you hanging.
What else is going on?
If you’re ever in Atlanta, check out Ruby Chow’s—a tapas restaurant with Asian fusion food. Delicious food, and really good cocktails and mocktails.
Also check out Ponce City Market. About half of it was closed down by the time we walked through, but seems like they’ve got lots of food and shopping options during the day. We’ll definitely head back there.
The world can be such a small, fun place sometimes. If you knew me in high school, you likely heard my sister and I pull out our guitars and play the song “Insomniac” by Billy Pilgrim, a song and a band that no one ever seemed to have heard of. Today I learned that this song, while never a hit itself, is one of the most-performed songs for a capella groups around the country. Do I get to say we found it first?
Good luck! Let us know where you put up homestead. Love XOXO