There is a lot to unpack with those innocuous words “It’s Happening”.
I have been reflecting a lot on how we are now launching into our nomadic world phase of life. We don’t know what to expect, but we’re excited and open-minded. We do know what it took to get to this point and I want to try to convey that part of it because it provides insights into how Mike and I complement each other and how we got all this done!
We have dozens of documents and spreadsheets — “What Needs to be Done to Sell House”, “Financial Info”, “Medical Coverage Options”, “Disposing of Belongings”, “Estate Planning and Document Completion”, “How Our Taxes Change”, “Packing List”, just to name a few. Each one of these represents countless hours of discussion and research and then decision making! I have to give major props to Mike — he carried the majority of the load while I was still working. I only had 30 days after retiring to throw all my energy into this strategic plan of attack. And those 30 days were a whirlwind. Not only did we go on trips to visit 5 of our 6 kids during that month, but we also increased our work-out routines (both of us added CrossFit and Mike added rock climbing) to be in better shape for mountain climbing and traveling. We also increased our running so we could do our favorite trail runs with our favorite running partners before we left. And if that wasn’t enough, we finished video-taping our Amazing Race video application and are waiting to see the final video before applying.
All of that while we still had to get everything done to be free of almost everything we used to own. I tell people we had a busy summer — got married in June, sold our house in July and and I retired in August!
I think that should give you an inkling of what it takes to get prepared to do something like this. It isn’t easy! Mike and I worked through every little detail together without any rancor and were able to stay calm and provide each other a helping hand when one of us got overwhelmed. Neither of us can imagine doing this with anyone else.
Oh, we did have some help that bears mentioning. We were gifted Chat GPT premium version (thanks Rick & Rudi) and have been using that extensively to answer all sorts of questions. Besides the usual — what should we do off-the-beaten path in Eastern and Southern Africa, there are things like what are the Visa requirements across the 15 different countries we are interested in going to, where is the best place to exchange money that is secure and gives a good rate, what does a Tanzanian couple/family eat for breakfast lunch and dinner in a typical week. We’re not wedded to Chat GPT but we do lean on Generative AI for reasearching so many things and the speed at which we get the information is remarkable. I thought I had generated a complete Visa Requirements table from AI that covered everything for a dozen countries and then we go to a passpport photo office and find out we need to know the dimensions of the photos required by each country. No problem — in about 15 seconds I had the table updated with that information for all the countries.
So yes, “IT’S HAPPENING” and I hope the behind-the-scenes look at some of it, was insightful for you.