It’s been a year since I quit my job and sailed off into the sunset! My job was never my identity, I’ve always valued my free time, but to voluntarily give up a good paycheck and security isn’t easy! Today I’m talking about what life is like as a woman of leisure.

Sidenote: sorry for the lack of posts lately, I flew up to Michigan for a family emergency and the blog wasn’t a priority. I’m back in NC now and here’s a new post to prove it!

On Quitting

I was essentially targeted as a high-achieving employee, I’d just been given an awesome raise and increased bonus, I was being groomed for management. I had a great boss, and I didn’t hate my job. Quitting was hard. Like, really hard. The further removed I am from the day I handed in my notice, the more confidence I have that it was the right choice. I’ll always wonder what could have been though!

I hated who I was at work. Being a young female in a field dominated by older men made me to co-opt a more forceful persona in order to be heard or taken seriously. In short, I was a bitch at work. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t be the easy-smiling, fun person that I am at home. I could never escape that persona, although I did better in the last couple years before I quit. I like me better now.

Financially

Since our plan was to completely up-end our lifestyle, it was really difficult to forecast our expenses. We gave it our best estimate, and saved up for a 4+ year sabbatical. If you’ve been following this blog for pretty much any length of time, you know that things didn’t go according to plan AT ALL. As such, we are spending a lot more than we thought we’d be. We’re also in a different country than we thought we’d be right now.

Realistically, with our level of spending being so much higher than predicted we’d have to make some huge changes to sustain ourselves for our forecast length of time. However, we’ve also changed our minds about a lot of things, including how far and wide we want to take this boat! So right now we’re going with the flow.

Things are totally different than we expected, but we’re still financially secure. We’ll adapt our plans to our financial limits, and check the piggy bank often!

Mentally

Oh boy. There’s a lot to unpack here. When we are traveling on the boat, it is pretty much a full time commitment. We keep busy with planning – weather planning, route planning, what we will do and see, where the good anchorages or marinas are, where the cheapest fuel is, etc. We travel a lot faster than most sailors (meaning we spend more of our week traveling, we’re not actually fast!). There’s a pretty good balance there.

Right now we are stationary, living on the boat at a marina while we wait for hurricane season to end. I have nothing going on. Nothing. No car, and nothing to do around here. Which leaves me with a lot of time to think and write. At times it’s been really hard. I feel like I’m trying to figure out who I am without work to validate me. I don’t get a whole lot done right now. Does that make me lazy, sitting on my butt every day? By pretty much any definition, I am lazy right now! Am I lazy person? I can sufficiently argue that I am not a lazy person. Is it a bad thing if I am lazy? I’m not a burden on society, but I’ve been such a hard worker all my life that it’s hard to mentally accept that label. Am I depressed? Oof, yeah, probably, but I know it’s situational and very temporary (we start traveling again in November).

I say I’m not doing much, but I’m playing around with CAD and 3D printing, I’m learning how to fly a drone, I’m really getting into photography and post-processing, I’ve started participating in citizen science (coastal microplastics survey – a perfect pairing for boat-life!), blogging and social media takes up a surprising amount of time, I’m getting back into physical fitness, I’m reading and learning and doing all sorts of fun things! But when I list out what I got done in a single day, I feel like I could have also accomplished the same things after I’d gotten home from work – my tasks need to fill up the day, so I stretch them out into an entire day. It’s weird. There’s just no pressure to get everything done all at once. If I do that, what will I do tomorrow!?

Future

Eventually, I would love to eventually get into something humanitarian or environmental. I put in my time at the corporate drone job and because of that, I can afford to do pretty much whatever I want right now. What I want to do is make an impact, to help others. I would really enjoy being some sort of project manager on one of the citizen science projects I’ve been researching, although I probably lack the credentials to get involved in something like that. A friend recommended catchafire.org, volunteer-based skills matching, which seems like an awesome way to give back using my skillset!

I love what we’re doing now but it’s not the rest of my life, and if we’re more location-stable I would definitely need to find something external to occupy a portion of my time, otherwise I’ll go crazy. If anyone has any suggestions or recommendations for future projects, please let me know!

The Bottom Line

We’re so fortunate to be able to live this life. It’s been hugely challenging, testing our mental and physical limits, but it’s been hugely rewarding as well. I’m so grateful for all the support, community, luck and hard work that we put in to make this dream a reality.