Change is Good

I don't plan on talking about money, tonight; and, in fact, my post will probably end up shorter than usual (no promises, though, as I tend to write these things in one take, and, depending on my mood, I can get wordy).

The family and I are embarking on a couple of new schools of thought this year (you could call them late new year's resolutions, I guess), and I figured I'd outline them below with the hope of both sharing them with my fellow tubers and clarifying them for myself.

The first approach is called "reduce material good accumulation". In other words, given that we prefer to remain mobile and flexible in our lives, with the ability to move to another continent for any reason within a day or two as our highest priority, the last move made it clear that our graduation to much larger accommodations over the last couple of years -- as our incomes grew and rents decreased -- resulted in our blind filling of space with a lot of useless crap.

Our solution? With the exception of groceries, anything we buy from here on out will be accompanied by the throwing out of at least 2 existing things in our inventory. In addition, I have noticed we have a lot of older stuff we don't really use, which we can probably sell/donate.

The motivation behind this was partly a website I read months ago, and partly the times my wife and I talk about how we both moved to Vancouver less than 3 years ago with all of our worldly possessions in our cars, while the 3 times we have moved since have involved a rental van, then a small full service move, and most recently, a massive, 6-hours-of-unloading, full service move.

I met a lady at work who moved back to Canada with her husband and son from the Cayman Islands, where they had been living for something like 7 years, with just four suitcases!

In our 21st century, global economy, they are a perfect example to aspire to.

The second approach we are going to take is to try to keep our vacations within the borders of Canada. While epically guilty of it ourselves, it bothers me to see many of us so quick to dash off to Mexico or Thailand or Europe when I'm certain the majority of us have not even been to more than 3 or 4 provinces (especially now that going to the USA is what I'm sure travelling into East Germany used to be like)!

I have personally never been further east (in Canada) than Ottawa. There's a whole other coast to explore! I have lived in BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario, and have driven across all of those, and Manitoba, numerous times. However, it irks me that I've never been to the Maritimes or Montreal or the Yukon, etc.

I've had dreams of driving the entire TransCanada Highway, but such a feat would take a solid week of 10-12 hour days of JUST driving to get from one coast to the other, with no time for stopping. 'Tis a big country, this one of ours.

Have a good week, everybody!