Things I Learned (relearned) While On Career Break

Things Break!

A year and a half ago, my husband and I decided to take a career break and pursue a dream. The mission: travel across the US for two years and visit all of the National Parks within the lower 48 and many other American Treasures. Along the way, we learned a lot and relearned things that will help us in the future.

When you are towing your home around the country, as someone in the industry mentioned to us, it's like the trailer being hit by a thousand tiny earthquakes. Ultimately, things break. At first, we would get frustrated and even angry as things break. We bought new equipment so that we wouldn't have these problems but still things were breaking! Even other things, like our bikes, experienced bent wheels, broken shifters, and many a flat tire.

While some of the problems were issues with manufacturing of our unit, we learned over time that getting mad about something falling down, cracking or being in the wrong place, was a waste of energy. As in anything in life, things do go wrong and it is how we respond to the problems that determines how it impacts us as much as the problem itself.

So things are still breaking, but in a most recent travel day, my husband simply said to me, "found a screw on the floor". And we moved on. I think he eventually figured out where that screw belonged. But this response allows for a more relaxed solution solving mentality that a rushed frantic attempt to fix something ASAP.

So if things break, take a pause and know that it is just a thing that broke. You can fix, replace or do without that thing.