In college I had my George Costanza moment. It’s not that every decision I’d ever made was wrong, I just realized if I never challenged myself to do anything differently my life was never going to progress. I decided to take classes that pushed me, buy cloths in styles I never saw myself in, turn down a Microsoft internship for one with a smaller company that offered more opportunity, etc.
Scaring yourself in order to grow is something you have to constantly work on. Three years ago we had Gabe. Two years ago I left a great job to start KickoffLabs with Scott. Last year we added Cora to our family. So, without an easy win this year what am I going to do?
Move the family to Ireland for at least a month
That’s it. One big goal. To start trying out the “New Rich” concepts of location independent work + life experiences. This is simple if you’re single… but we’re going to figure out what it means with a family.
I was scared to even tell Gretchen that I wanted to do something like this. That was dumb. She got it and was 100% onboard and we’re pushing each other to make it possible.
It’s going to be a grand experiment in life simplification. Our goal is to live in a city without all the amenities we currently call home.
- My job can be done anywhere with wifi.
- Gretchen wants to spend more time with the kids.
- It’s just as hard to travel with a family of four for a week as it is for any longer period of time.
- When you compare short term rentals internationally you can get great deals compared to Hotel stays.
- Our kids are young enough now that we aren’t tied down.
It’s going to require some of my other 2013 goals to get accomplished in order to make this possible and repeatable if we like it. This goal has already proven to be a great motivational tool for Gretchen and I to start doing things we’ve been putting off for too long.
We may have added kids to our lives, but we aren’t going to wait for retirement to start “living” again. We’re going to live more, now, as a family than we did before we had kids.