Chapter 3: Travel-Work-Life Balance
What is the perfect work-life balance? It is something we strive for every day in our lives, but does it even exist? And what happens when you add another layer into the mix (let’s say travel)? Equilibrium becomes even harder to come by. For those that live a similar lifestyle to us, you have probably been through this before. Juggling work, life, and travel are not easy, and it has been a prevalent challenge in our life since we started living on the road.
We were recently visiting Michigan and spent quite a bit of time at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore before heading over to Wisconsin. It was such an intriguing place. There were gorgeous cliffs, forests, beaches, and trails. Because of all of the beautiful landscapes, it made it challenging to knock off everything on our to-do list (we are still a little sad about missing out on kayaking). And while we were there, life kicked in (as it always does) with work, laundry, cooking, and the usual chores.
When we are traveling, of course, we want to experience everything that a place has to offer, but we also know that we have to live life at the same time. We have to accept that real life is still happening, and we have to give ourselves the ability to breathe and enjoy the parts of our travels that we do get to experience. That is what true balance is all about.
When Andrea sprained her foot during one of our first hikes at Pictured Rocks, we knew our patience would be tested. The whole hike that day just wasn’t what we were expecting. We took a wrong turn in the beginning which turned our 5-mile hike into a 7-mile one. This normally wouldn’t have been that big of a deal, but we weren’t able to properly prepare for the hike and ended up being out way too late, and Andrea overworked her foot. It was disheartening because that meant that other long hikes and views we had planned to see weren’t realistic for us anymore.
C’est la vie.
You will never have enough time in the day to do all of the things you want to do. Knowing that we can never see all that the world has to offer is the beauty of it anyway. It’s always changing and growing. It’s limitless. What has helped us find our balance (which is still off-kilter from time to time) is learning to appreciate what we did see. That, and knowing that we can always come back.
We travel for the experience of traveling. The feeling of going to a place we have never seen before knowing that in the end, we will leave, but that when we return we get to see it in a whole new light. As long as we are having fun and enjoying life, that is a win for us, and that’s balance.
Farm Living in Wisconsin
