Our Why
When you make a significant shift in your life, you do so for a big reason. It’s not like someone wakes up one day and just decides to do things entirely differently than they once did.
While we know that we must continue to work and save for retirement, that has become our secondary focus to ensuring that we are enjoying life NOW.
Our why is this: We are well aware of our mortality, and that the number of good, healthy years we have left are probably limited.
In a matter of 30 months, we lost three of our parents and two grandmothers. Tess lost her grandmother and her mom six days apart.
Our grandmothers had lived a full life so their passing, while sad, was anticipated, but our parents had not. All three left us unexpectedly and too soon. Digesting the grief while working demanding careers left us raw, angry and resentful that the work-life we’d created didn’t afford us the space we needed to grieve.
Our parents’ deaths brought to the forefront that our life is finite. We’ve watched too many loved ones work, work, work with big plans to enjoy life once they retire, only to retire with an ailing body … or worse.
We refuse to wait until retirement to live our fullest life. We are focused on enjoying life now.
How Beyond The Grind Life Began
Interesting things happen when you share. As we talked with friends and confessed that we’d “had it” with the grind and wanted something bigger from life, our friends revealed they’d been feeling this way, too. Some even teared up as they realized they were not alone in these feelings.
You aren’t alone, either.
Beyond the Grind Life Could Mean ...
- Traveling in your Airstream on the weekends.
- Visiting all 63 National Parks in the United States.
- Living as an expat in Europe.
- Creating a hobby-business that is focused on enjoyment first, money second.
- Becoming semi-retired by working seasonally.
- Moving to Costa Rica for a few years because you’ve always wanted to.
As you follow us, you’ll see that we enjoy being outside, so you’ll likely see stories of fishing, hiking and road-trip adventures. But just because our “beyond the grind” involves being outside, that doesn’t need to mean the same for you. For you, it could mean something completely different.