Life By Design

Many of you know that my husband Bruce & I will be doing a ‘bucket list’/major dream adventure starting Apr 10… We’re driving our RV round trip from Colorado to Alaska and taking 4 months to do it!!

I’ll still be coaching (we have Starlink and it works great!); we have been doing prep on the RV, working out a house sitting arrangement, putting all of our bills online, watching alot of Youtube Alaska RV Videos, and various other tasks for the past 4 mos.

People have been asking us WHY do this? Great question - it actually started out as my husband’s dream and I caught on. We were both raised to love the outdoors and most years we took our vacations as kids and then ourselves with our kids, camping, hiking, backpacking, fishing and exploring. So the outdoor adventure is in our blood!

The cool thing is we’re doing this about 10 yrs+ earlier than we thought we could and that is a result of living our ‘lives by design, not by default' that I’ve learned through digging deep spiritually, being coached, coaching, and modeling others who have gone before us.

Living our dreams is not necessarily something we’re taught! We’ve lived ‘default’ lives for many years, not realizing the correlation between writing down your dreams that become goals and then watching them come to life. When this happens, it is EPIC. Lifechanging. Faith building.

This trip is also taking me out of my comfort zone. I’m a planner. Some would say ‘serial planner’ and I should be in therapy - but that’s for another blog. While we have several parts of the trip planned because we needed to make reservations months in advance, most of the trip is not yet planned (meaning we’re not sure where we will be on what particular day). We have organized certain weeks where we will be traveling from point A to point B and that’s it. EEEK - my planning/safe brain wants to go into panic mode with all the ‘what-if’s' like; what if the RV breaks down, we hit a moose, do we have enough bear spray, we can’t find a place to stay (due to NOT planning), what IS a ‘frost heave’, and a thousand other wild thoughts. I KNOW I’m not the only one who has this brain lol. AND being out of my comfort zone is SOO good for growth spiritually, mentally, emotionally, physically and more! So even though I’m nervous about certain things and working on being calm and surrendering to the unknown, it’s also quite exhilarating and exciting. You know the saying… if your dreams don’t scare you, you’re not dreaming big enough!

Finally, our motto of ‘Life is Short, Live it Big’. Driving an RV to Alaska is not on everyone’s ‘fav thing to do’ list. That’s ok! Living a BIG life is whatever ‘big’ means to you! Maybe bungee jumping, climbing Everest, traveling in Europe, road/track racing, are on your list. Or it could be creating & spending hours gardening! (that would not be mine, and although I was raised on a farm by generations of farmers, I accidently kill houseplants - my grandparents would shudder!! lol) The point is, are you living the life YOU are designed to and designing? Or are you just existing? Life is too short to simply exist. Live WHO you are meant to be.

This blog was a bit more on the personal side. Hopefully I’m modeling for you to live your dreams and get out of your comfort zone! I’m sure our adventure will bring so much joy and growth which we’re looking forward to and there will be plenty of FUN learning along the way. What is on YOUR dream list that you’ll fulfill this year?

Yours in adventure and living your dreams with a little nail biting, and all the oohs and aaahs in between!

Traci