I Wished to Live Deliberately

Since Brent and I met, he's longed to explore. In our young 20s together, he wanted to backpack from snow resort to the next, working to snowboard and stay in dormitory lodging. Our compromise then was good for both of us: we backpacked Europe and even attempted to make London our home. We had a blast, though living in London didn't pan out when we realized how hard it was to find work. 

When we returned from Europe, we started looking for a house. We found this house on Dorset St. in Rancho Cucamonga and we've been here ever since. That's 18 years here. We've spent our entire adult lives living here and in doing so have loved, lost, cried, partied, laughed, and learned together. We've brought the house from funky to modern and have now raised a daughter and are growing another under its roof.

1998-2016: Dorset St. has seen us through a generation!

This is a lot more than we had planned for our time in this house. As we all know, once we start investing in things, we become bound to them. We start spending money, and making money to spend more money, and working to find vacation time, and then working until we hope we don't have to work anymore one day. We become fastened to our investments and we start looking to upgrade to the next investments. Then we die, right?

We were locked into that version of the American Dream and have been since we bought this house in some way. We've spent the last decade or so looking at hundreds of other homes on the market throughout Rancho Cucamonga and Alta Loma, looking to do what any seeker of the American Dream is looking to do: upgrade. We dreamed of a half acre and eventually a good school district and school zone for our family to mature and probably retire. The travel dreams were forgotten in favor of settling for that once a year vacation and we had molded ourselves into that traditional version of the American Dream. Perhaps it was fate that we never found the right fit and stayed put... in this starter home that would seemingly become our forever home.

Then, I became an activist and a law was passed in California that changed everything. This matter is a whole other entry, but it jolted me into remembering what Brent and I had pushed to the back of our hearts and minds. It reminded me that there is a whole country and life out there and that we would never experience it if we stayed in the pigeon hole we had allowed ourselves to believe was our intended path. Taking an abysmal epiphany about reality and shaping it into a future we could embrace and revel in, we developed our own version of the American Dream.

We started by selling the lot on Red Hill that we had bought in 2003 when we began to dream of building our dream home and dream life. Though we still had a fading vision of the dream home and life there that would never be, we also couldn't wait to get it off our hands. With money in the bank and new sense of freedom after shedding something so significant, we pressed onward. We bought a home on wheels-- a 42' palace of a fifth wheel with not one but two special spaces for Evelyn to sleep and play. It would become our new home. But what of Dorset St.? We put our home of 18 years, the home we know like the back of our hands, on the market. Within a day we had an offer and within a week, we were in escrow. I guess this is really happening.



The New Home

So, what are we doing?

We're pursuing life, knowledge, family. We're seizing the opportunities blessed upon us by my job and the sale of our investments and we're investing in our own small and growing family. We are taking a break from the state we've known and are instead seeking experience. We're removing Brent from the daily grind he settled into and are bringing him into the family, where he can spend quality time with us-- be a husband and father while exploring and sating the wanderlust he has long suppressed.

We're pursuing simplicity (albeit in a luxury home on wheels) and purpose. We're seeking comfort and experiences. We're open to new places, a potential new life, a potential new future.

And it's happening in less than two months.

Escrow closes mid-July. Our first stop, appropriately enough, will be our annual camping trip at Doheny with family and friends. After our seven day stay at the vacation spot we love so much, we will likely be staying local to friends and family, bouncing from Prado to Jurupa to Yucaipa Regional Parks. I'll be plenty huge with Baby #2 by August, and we'll be staying in Yucaipa at that point to be near the birthing center where we will welcome her into the world and our new adventures. While we'll stay local throughout some portion of September, the four of us will be setting off for new adventures before Fall's end.

Though I've always loved Thoreau, and teaching his works and philosophies was a highlight of my year in the high school classroom, I had never thought I'd be taking a step into his world. So, here we go... on our quest to learn what life has to teach... and in the process strengthen our existence as a family and as individuals.