It’s been over a month since my last post and you may be wondering what’s been going on. Is something wrong? Why the lack of updates? Did we make the move to Indonesia? Are we living the good life in a tropical paradise? This post will answer those questions and more.
Evolution
One of the things that I’ve learned along this sabbatical journey is that adaptability is a good skill to develop. Like those goofy commercials for Nationwide Insurance so blatantly point out; “Life Comes At You Fast”. Life does happen fast and one needs to be prepared to adapt, innovate and act on varying circumstances. Without the ability to do this it’s so easy to become trapped in circumstance which is what happens to so many of us.
People often hint that there are “circumstances beyond their control” but I’m not sure I believe that. Sure things happen that we have limited control over but we always have control over how we react to them. We always have control over what actions we take to overcome those circumstances.
We’ve had a ton of “circumstances” present themselves over the course of the past 2 months. Many of these have had the potential to derail our sabbatical train and we’ve had to scramble and brainstorm a bit to figure out how to navigate the stormy waters. As a result our sabbatical plans have evolved and our path seems clearer, although still littered with challenges and uncertainty.
Life Comes At You Fast
The circumstances I referred to above were all medical related. September was not a kind month to our medical needs. First, I had to endure both an endoscopy and colonoscopy (hopefully they changed scopes between the two) which themselves were not unbearable (it was the prep beforehand that was the worst). Drinking that nasty prep solution and enduring a bad case of McGurggles and explosive backfires was much worse than a tube being snaked into every orifice. But thankfully the results showed nothing of concern although in a year I will need a follow-up endoscopy. Still it was a big hit to the financial aspect of our sabbatical planning.
Next it was recommended that one of my kids get an echo-cardiogram. These tests are not inexpensive and with our co-pay and deductibles it is once again a huge hit to our sabbatical budget. But there is nothing more important than the health of your kids.
My wife had some minor surgery which will better diagnose a condition that was recently discovered during an annual checkup. Anytime a medical procedure includes the word surgery you better tighten your grip on your wallet or purse because it gets expensive really fast even when you have decent medical insurance. But again, if you are able to potentially diagnose a serious medical condition early then money isn’t really a factor to dwell on. Still the financial sting isn’t easily ignored.
{ 13 comments }
