Here is some information that will be of no surprise to anyone who actually knows me. Mentally speaking, I was not a very good stay-at-home mom.
I mean, I did a fine job at it. I kept my kids alive. They were fed, changed, and cleaned, and whatnot. I even found some Instagrammy interactive kid activities, took cool pics of them eating homemade cloud dough and sloshing around in sensory bins, and dutifully posted them on social media. From the outside, I suppose it all looked wonderfully cozy.
But mentally, I was not okay. Because, look, spending long hours with humans who have no capacity for abstract thought or logic is frankly for the birds. I felt lonely and disconnected and a bit resentful that Travis got to go out into the world like a normal human person and talk to other normal human people.
Some days were cozy, but a lot of the time, when Trav rolled home in the evenings, I felt like the lady in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper. In this short story, a woman is held in isolation after giving birth, essentially to treat what we might now recognize as post-partum depression. She becomes convinced there is a woman trapped behind her wallpaper, an obsession that grows as her mental state deteriorates. There were nights I felt like I was trying to claw my way out of my own mental wallpaper cage. Don't worry, friends, I did get professional help for this. And unlike the patronizing husband in Gilman's short story, Trav was wholly supportive.
But there is a reason I am telling you all of this, and yes, it’s related to this whole RV thing. Bear with me.
When Trav and I cooked up this wacky idea of a year on the road in an RV, we envisioned that we would both take off work for the entire year. I was just starting my consulting business, which at the time consisted of a handful of workshops a year, so it wasn’t farfetched to think that just not working would be okay for me.
And Trav’s place of work, well, honestly, they were not really on board with the idea of any kind of remote work. They were firmly entrenched in the old-school “butts in seats” culture that dominated the corporate world, especially in the architecture/design arena pre-pandemic. So, he planned to take a leave of absence. This is a huge part of why we took six years to prepare. To save. So we could take a year off and be financially okay.
And then. Covid. And Covid sucked, to be sure. It was awful. We lost a beloved family member. And I had a sister who worked endless hours as an ER nurse in a makeshift tent, basically wearing paper bags as PPE and recycling the same N95 mask for weeks on end, and everything was awful.
BUT Trav’s work was forced to go remote. And. They realized that it was a thing they could do. And that revolutionized the workplace across the country.
I can tell you my introverted husband was living his best work life. He was up in his bedroom office, not suffering a commute, not making watercooler talk, and not being distracted. I am certain his productivity went up. His mood improved. And when the pandemic subsided, and the dust settled, his workplace could no longer deny that remote work, well, works.
So our plans shifted and Trav began talking about working from the road. This way, we would keep our insurance benefits, he would keep his other benefits, and we would have an income on the road. Excellent.
I am sure his bosses had absolutely no idea on the planet what “roadschooling” entailed. I am sure they thought we would be rolling around to places like Disney World every day and partying nonstop, which sounds great and all but is highly untenable. A year of living like that would kill us all.
He explained that roadschooling means living on the road in a way that allows us to be stationary for a week or two at a time so that we can take things slowly, explore, learn, and relax—much like we do at home—except on the road. It took some convincing. He put in a formal proposal to work from the road, and he got cleared–on a probationary basis.
At the same time, my consulting business had grown. When I announced to my schools that I would be traveling, half of them asked me if I would still be able to support them from the road. Of course, I said yes.
So now we were both going to be working from the road. Trav for 32 hours a week, me about 10 hours a month. This is incredibly privileged. I know this. I see folks in the RV communities regularly asking how to find remote work, and here we are, already set before we even hit the road. It is incredible.
BUT. This changes everything.
I didn’t realize how seismic this shift in plans was until our fourth trip out, our “Work From the Road” test trip, when we headed out to a park very near our home for four days from Sunday to Wednesday so that we could set up and then Trav could practice working “from the road.”
Our main goal for this trip was to test the internet and see how it went for Trav to work in the RV since he would be working for several days at a time. My work would be sporadic, and I would fit it in here and there. It is most important for Travis, as he will have an actual work schedule.
We have researched a few different internet options, and it came down to two options: a travel hotspot service and a satellite service like Starlink. We ended up going with the hotspot service mainly because the satellite service requires us to be out in the open with free and clear access to open skies. So, any trees or other obstructions would render our satellite service inoperable. With the hotspot service, we can hook into any cell tower nearby, and our router will continually search for the strongest signal. So we paid for TravelFi, got our account set up and this is what we were testing.
I mean, that’s what we set out to test that weekend. What we ended up testing was so much more.
Here’s the thing: You go out to do the RV shakedown trip, test all the tubes, knobs, appliances, and slides, and figure out what goes where and how to drive the whole unwieldy building on wheels. But you don’t really think at all about figuring out the actual dynamics of a family of four living in a small space like that. And it all sounds wonderfully lovely. And I am sure it largely will be.
We spent some time entertaining family since our RV was so close to the city. But once everyone left and Travis got his office set up in the mid-bunk and closed the door, it was just the girls and me.
And so now it was the "family dynamics shakedown" trip.
It started fine.
And then the rain came.
Thunderstorms and lightning. We were stuck inside. And we had to be quiet while Trav was on calls. And the internet kept dropping. We couldn’t watch TV. And the girls got sick of the three games we had. And didn’t want to color anymore. Or play 20 questions. Or read. And then the whining started. And then the bickering. And the restlessness.
And my mental “yellow wallpaper cage” started creeping in around me.
Bedtime was the usual shitshow. The girls refused to go to sleep. At first– the rain is too loud. There are mosquitoes. The bed is uncomfortable. I don’t have the right stuffy. These pajamas are hot. This RV is scary. I don’t want to be here. I want to go home. I don’t want to do this for a year. Why do we have to do this for a year? You’re making us travel for a year, and we are missing our fourth-grade year, and we will miss all of our friends, and they will forget us, and we don’t want to go. This is your dream, not ours. Why are you doing this to us? Then, existential horror, dread, and panic ensued.
No one slept.
By the second day, I took them to the beach in the rain and sat there with the biting flies getting wet while they swam, remembering my long, lonely days at home with the girls when they were babes, feeling overwhelmed by my inability to be good at this momming thing.
I sat there on the beach, angry that Trav was working on this trip, angry that we would be exploring without him for so much of the next year, and sad that he would miss things and annoyed with myself for feeling sad and angry when we have so much damn privilege. And annoyed as hell at the rain and the biting flies.
It was a lot.
I think most of all, I was scared that I would find myself right back where I was back in the beginning, back in those hard lonely scary, anxiety-ridden yellow wallpaper days of twin babyhood and I felt terrified then that I can't do this. That I somehow won't be able to do this.
By 4:30, I was knocking on the midbunk door. “Are you done working? I need you to take over. I need like 30 minutes to myself.” I mean, okay, 4:30 is early, but he did take them to the park during a break in the rain around 6.
So here is one thing we learned: Jen needs an hour a day to regroup away from the kids in order to be functional. Put that on the checklist.
Once I had regrouped, it occurred to me that as much as I might start feeling resentful that I had to deal with the bickering and whining all day long alone, he might feel resentful that he would not be able to join us for all of the adventures.
That night, I asked him about that. “Don’t you think you will be a bit resentful that you will miss some sightseeing and exploring if you work a few days a week?”
Trav looked at me like I was speaking in tongues. How could he not understand? I promise I would definitely feel resentful. I mean, that seems to be one of my specialities–feeling resentful.
“No, Jen. I would do anything to give our girls this experience. If I have to work a few days, that’s fine. I am just excited to hear about what they see and learn.”
Is he a way better person than me?
For sure. Because I would be so annoyed to miss out on the sightseeing. But I am also annoyed to have to do it all alone. And here he is over there, just struggling away with the dropped internet, trying to work in this tiny room at this tiny desk in this tiny chair so we can have all of the things. All of them.
Biting flies didn’t seem so bad after that.
The next day, I drove the girls into town to the craft store, and we bought some supplies to make fairy crowns. Just as they finished their crowns, the sun came out for about 30 minutes, and we went on a fairy scavenger hunt. My girls took me around the campground and pointed out mushrooms and “fairy doors” and all of the other little magical things.
Trav managed to figure out how to operate the internet. He organized his workspace. We even managed to have a movie night, and the girls only spun out into existential despair for half the time on our last night there.
And then, it was time to pack up and head home.
I realized that this is not going to be the trip we had initially planned. I have to give myself time to mourn that. It was supposed to be the four of us. And it will be at times. Travis will be with us for a lot of our adventures.
But much of it will be just the three of us. The girls still don’t have the capacity for much logic, but their abstract thought is growing! I will have days where they whine, and it will be hard, and I will be lonely, and there will be biting flies. But it can't possibly rain every day.
I just have to work on shifting my thinking. I have to work to tear down the wallpaper. To let my girls lead and to look for the magic wherever we can find it. And to enjoy adventuring as a family whenever we get the chance.
Because damn, I sure am lucky I found Travis. And even on the hardest days, part-time adventures with him are still going to be the journey of a lifetime.
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