Somewhere along the way between crayons and that college degree, we lost our sense of wonder.
Maybe it was in those years where imaginary friends and rolling in the dirt was no longer in the curriculum, or perhaps it happened later when we were told our worth was measured in the size of our paychecks and colored by the filters of our Instagram feeds.
You measure yourself from one accomplishment to the next.
The points of your GPA, carats on your left hand, how many months ’til he proposed, the letters after your name, the price per square foot, how many likes you get on you got on a candid Facebook photo that really took four attempts and was anything but candid. Keep chasing. Make it look easy.
Sometimes you need a sucker punch to the gut to level your life out- because up until that point, I couldn’t stop moving for fear of missing out.
My wake up call came in a series of shocks. My mother died unexpectedly, an ill-fated engagement unraveled a year later, I lost my job and said goodbye to a beloved mentor with pancreatic cancer . Suddenly the life I thought I “should” have looked a lot different.
It was then I started to evaluate my choices and stopped chasing.
In 2015, I took a solo honeymoon to Bermuda after calling off my wedding.
Life simply is a choice to dance in the margins of joy and pain.
I took my wedding fund and travelled solo for a year. Found love again. Moved to Texas. Questioned everything and decided to stop sacrificing today for a promise of tomorrow.
I believe anyone can live boldly and dream wildly while still balancing a 9-5 job, mortgage and saving for retirement. You can have fun along the way, and crush it financially. You can totally be yourself along the way instead of chasing everybody else’s idea of success, and you can have more fun doing it. Life’s too short to be bored.
I’m committed to finding meaning beyond the 9-5, to reclaim the dream between age 17 & 65. I am committed to living debt free, shaving 15 years off of my retirement so I don’t have to wait to follow a passion and explore.
I will document my attempts to travel hack, pay off my mortgage, live within my means, experiment relentlessly, acquire new skills and perhaps mix a few cocktails from deep in the heart of Texas.
I hope you’ll join me. 🙂
cheers. xoxo.
-Shannyn
