Change is Good

When Jen and I started talking seriously about this trip we covered a list of practical issues: what to do with our home and our belongings, what kind of insurance coverage we could get, what sort of medical care exists in the places we’d be going, how we would manage our finances from the road, and so on. And while those mundane topics formed the bulk of our “serious” discussions, we also talked about another important issue: How to keep our relationship intact while spending 24 hours a day, 7 days a week together in sometimes very stressful and often exhausting situations. We read blog posts by couples who have been traveling together for years and extracted all the advice we could. Most of it boiled down to four things: Forgive each other quickly and easily. Break up the responsibilities so neither partner feels overwhelmed and each knows what’s expected of her. Be prepared to compromise but also to give in 100% to the other person’s wishes every now and then. And most importantly, take time apart. A few days here and there, maybe a week if each person wants to go somewhere the other doesn’t. One digital nomad couple we’ve read about aims to spend 1-2 months each year traveling without the other.

We continue to work on all of those things but there’s one we’ve failed at: spending time apart. In all this time, we’ve never spent more than 8 consecutive hours apart. So now that we’ve been on the road for more than nine months, we’re making a change. Jen’s going back to Thailand and Japan for a spell while I continue kicking around Southeast Asia. We’ll each be blogging and posts from our shared time in Thailand and Myanmar will continue to roll out. We’ll each try to update Facebook and Twitter but Jen is likely to have faster internet than I so don’t be surprised if she posts more than I do. Our “Where are we now?” page will show where Jen is since we can only show one destination at a time.  We’re both excited about this opportunity to do some solo travel and to reconnecting in Thailand at the start of October.

I hope you’ll keep following us here. The best way to learn about new posts is to subscribe (look in the upper right part of this page for a box where you can enter your e-mail address). Rest assured, your e-mail address won’t be used for anything other than sending you alerts of new posts. And by the way, we love comments here on the blog and do our best to reply to as many as we can. With things changing around here – at least for a little while – now’s a good time to let us know what you want more or less of. Do you want reviews of the places we stay or tour operators we use? More personal narrative like Jen’s Cambodian bus post and Marbree’s recounting of our day at the Killing Fields? More practical tips like those we laid out for Bora Bora? We can’t promise to incorporate all suggestions right away but we can work to deliver more of what you want, just let us know what that is.

Change is good. Without it, we would stagnate and that’s the opposite of chasing the unknown.