We're "settled in" to land life now, but the pattern of our daily lives still has a few things in common with our past three years as water gypsies. Much of our time is spent in the logistics of living: obtaining our food (although from a grocery rather than from the reef), installation and maintenance of our equipment, keeping our records and information straight. If it's a beautiful day and we feel like exploring, we jump on our bikes or grab a daypack and water bottles. We're not working the 9-to-5 thing; our lives are still as free and self-structured as before. As a corollary, we don't have much money.
This didn't bother me before, when we were out on the boat. At sea and among the small, lightly-inhabited islands we favor, there was nothing much to spend money on. Our periodic city visits never broke the bank, even when we splurged on meals out and having our laundry done. We didn't need much, and couldn't buy much, in any case, limited by space and logistics.
The stock market was up, or at least we didn't know it was down. We'd just go to an ATM machine, stick in the plastic card, and pull out money. Whether it was a few hundred dollars or a few hundred thousand pesos, it seemed to come magically, from some inexhaustible resource. But little by little, we exhausted it.
Oh, not really. We still have more in the bank (metaphorically speaking; most of it's in stocks and mutual funds) than most Americans. But we've been zooming through our cash at a meteoric rate lately: RV purchase, RV fuel, apartment deposit and rent, furniture, computer equipment.
Nothing's really changed. We are in the same financial position we were in six months ago, a year ago. But I find myself clamping down hard on expenses, even more so than when we were cruising. Britt's "new" computer is far from the latest and greatest (although it's about ten times as powerful as the better of our two old broken-down laptops!). Every bit of our furniture is a yard-sale find. I'm grumbling about Britt's plans to buy a (used) pickup. I bike around to each grocery store in turn and buy only the weekly specials.
I catch myself nervously scanning the classified ads for any job that might bring in some money, any money. Order processor? Customer service? And then I think, "Give up my time for a lousy eight dollars an hour? Am I nuts?" So I go to the online ads for work in my past field of meteorology. When I look at the jobs that my education and past work qualify me for, I realize I really don't want to do that work. Granted, it would be giving up my time for a lot more money. But it would still be giving up my time. And, of course, we'd have to live somewhere else.
Durango is living up to all of our expectations, and we'd really like to stay here -- at least for that part of our life that isn't spent on the boat. We can hop on our bikes and be on mountain trails in minutes; we can walk a few blocks and be strolling down the historic business district. There are brewpubs and restaurants and a wonderful little museum, and from our apartment we can hear the famous old narrow-gauge steam train blow its whistle every afternoon as it chugs back from Silverton with that day's load of tourists. Many people in town share our values and attitudes, and we've made a few friends.
So, we'll keep pushing on. There are dollars on the horizon, though they're still some distance away. Britt has plunged deeply into the new .NET world, and is hopeful about contract prospects (and he had darned well better be, considering all the money he's shelling out for the software tools he needs). I sold a short article to Cruising World, and I've got a bunch of other writing tentacles out, questing for publication. We're not on the soup line yet. With luck (and hard work) we'll get our land legs. And when we're established...we'll head out to sea again!