2019 Life Updates: We Took a Break/Advice for Changing Jobs

It’s the start of 2019 and yet we haven’t even made a single post about our travel plans for the year (and other plans, that is, as I wrote this post). The truth is, we have both been busy with our personal lives and discovering what we really want in life, so we didn’t find much time to document or write anything on the blog.

The truth is, we both took a break, and while many people don’t like taking blogging breaks, we’re one of the few who do.

2019 Life Updates: We Both Changed Jobs

So, as the title says ‘Advice for Changing Jobs’, Peter and I both changed jobs. I mean, we’re still both employed within a cubicle and not fully retired yet, but funnily enough, we both started on the same date in our new roles. For him, it was a promotion and a relocation back home with his current company, and for me, it was starting anew with a new company.

For him, the driving between where he worked (Tampa, Florida) and where we lived (Jacksonville, FL) became such a drag (think of all the miles he was accruing on the car), and of course, driving is not really that fun. Even with audiobooks, 35,000 miles in one year is…too many.

So when this opportunity came up, he applied for it, got the job, and he’s back home. Yay! We get to spend more time together and hopefully do more projects together. It’s been a journey getting this new role: one that took months, but we finally got there in the end. Funnily enough, in the end, he will have a shorter commute than me. Works out for him, but not for me.

For me, I loved the people in my old workplace, but certain circumstances forced me to leave. Like, oh, I don’t know – them offshoring my job to India.

I mean, I really have no intention to visit that country, much less stay there for a few weeks at a time away from Peter and train people who are going to take over my job while I have to look for another job when I come back home.

It’s just the way it is. You have to jump ship when you really need to, and in this case, I managed to jump before everybody else started jumping, so I had a bit more of a bargaining power. It wasn’t so bad, it’s just that starting anew after 12 years at the same company is a bit daunting. This is the place where Peter and I met, btw, and which gave me the opportunity to live in 3 different countries. Heck, I even managed to move abroad because of this company, which I’m really grateful for.

But that’s the thing: life changes. To prepare for the change in your career and other changes along the way, I highly recommend reading Spencer Johnson’s book: “Who Moved My Cheese“. It is a very short book, less than 100 pages long, about how different characteristics in our own life deal with change. Some look for it, some are against it. And you know what? Life isn’t life without change!

As a side note, there is a sequel to Who Moved My Cheese called “Out of the Maze” but I haven’t had time to read it yet.

We’re Writing Books

A few weeks/months from now, you might see a new header up top saying ‘store’. We are going to launch an online bookstore selling travel guides that we wrote ourselves! Yay! We’re actually really excited with this new thing that’s happening, and that’s why we kept mostly offline for the past few months.

We have been silently writing our e-guides behind the scenes, and we’re excited to launch them. We even have a personal guarantee to each and every one of our guides: we only recommend places that we’ve been personally ourselves. We won’t write a guide about Papua New Guinea or something like that because we’ve personally never been there, and unlike some other guide books which recommend a destination mainly because of internet research or through guest posts, we’re definitely not going to go down that route.

While I have been mostly interested in writing travel-related guidebooks and the like, Peter is busy writing novels on his spare time. He’s more a fiction writer than I am, but to each their own.

We are still reading books in our spare time, but I’m not sure I can concentrate on writing full length reviews on them every single time. So, you can follow our reviews on my Goodreads page. That’s the more up to date view of the books we’ve read personally.

We’re Still Traveling and Exploring

So in 2019, here are some of the trips we have already booked:

A week-long cruise of the Caribbean from Tampa heading to the following cruise ports:

• Costa Maya, Mexico
• Cozumel, Mexico
• Roatan, Honduras
• Belize City, Belize

We haven’t personally been to any of these places so we are excited. When we get back to Tampa, it’s BOA museum days on us, so we’re excited to add 2 more destinations as we weekend in Tampa/Sarasota before we drive back home on Sunday night. Stay tuned.

In February, we are going to do a quick trip to New York City.

In March, we’re going to Orlando for Disney’s Animal Kingdom to see the new Pandora world/rides.  Also going to Miami for Wordcamp Miami, so that should be both educational and fun.

In May, we are going to Indianapolis, Indiana & Gatlinburg, Tennessee with a stopover in Columbia, South Carolina. The Gatlinburg trip should be fun, Peter’s big bro is coming with us, so expect a lot of nature and hiking. Hopefully, we get to write a trip report (or an e-guide) soon!

In June, we’re going back to Europe, visiting Vienna, Austria, Slovakia & Prague, Czech Republic. Peter’s other cousin is getting married so we’re taking a few days off our nearly 2 week schedule to attend their wedding (and expect a big Slovak family gathering to boot). My mom will try and join us on that trip, so fingers crossed that she gets a Schengen visa.

In July, we’re headed to Raleigh, North Carolina.

In August, we head down to Fort Lauderdale and Orlando to watch the Backstreet Boys. Well, it’s just me, not Peter. He refuses to watch the Backstreet Boys with me, so I recruited a friend of mine to fly down to Fort Lauderdale.

Unfortunately, I might have to miss FinCon in September of this year. The schedule might not be a good fit for my new job, but it’s all just wait and see at this moment.

We will update this page as soon as we get more information on trips we’re going to.

We normally don’t include staycation trips to St Augustine, or anything local in our reports, but we are going to do 6 Alhambra Jacksonville shows this year. Yay.

Here’s to a Year of Exploration and New Experiences

Every year brings about a new level of experiences that we can’t wait to undertake. Be it good or bad, we know that we are ready for anything that life gets to toss at us. After all, it is the journey that makes the final destination all that interesting.

Also know that as we go through our day to day lives, we are still sharing bits and pieces of it on our blog. It is a glimpse of what makes us be us, and enables you guys to see some of the creative process that goes on behind the blog.

Thank you for reading, and hopefully you still follow us on our journey to becoming financially independent in our quest to full time travel.