33: Pivoting

April 11, 2016 Helen McLaughlin

AINSWORTH STATE PARK | cascade locks, or — AINSWORTH STATE PARK | *cascade locks, or*

A few weeks ago, we heard from a couple who wants to buy our RV.

RV ownership can be a tricky enterprise. For one thing, it's not nearly as glamorous as one might imagine. Like a house, everything breaks (usually one thing after the next, if not all at once); dust collects on windowsills just the same; the shower floor and doors need scrubbing to keep from turning pink; plumbing has to be fixed when it backs up or when pipes freeze. Then there's all the vehicle-type things to maintain: six enormous tires, an engine (and its oil changes), a generator (and its oil changes), battery upkeep, diesel fuel, and so on. The country is ours to explore, yes, but that freedom isn't free. Despite its steep price tag, an RV is an investment that more accurately resembles that of vehicle ownership than home ownership: It depreciates at an alarmingly fast rate, so much so that you could find yourself owing more on it than it's actually worth (hello, 2008 subprime mortgage crisis), a scary prospect for anyone, let alone a couple who wants to make other investments, eventually. And without a beleaguered 34-foot rig parked in the front yard of said other investments.

Everything we've heard seems to suggest that it takes about a year to find a serious buyer for a motorhome. Ah, perfect! A year feels like a sweet spot—a long enough plan to feel intentional about how we spend the next 12 months, but a short enough timeline to start scheming about next moves.

So, no one is more surprised than we are that three months after making an online listing we have an earnest buyer who's ready to buy our motorhome for what we owe. And who lives in the very same city as some of our family whom we'd planned to visit at this exact time. (Don't need to consider yourself a serendipiter to see what's happening here.)

Surprised and...relieved? devastated? The two are so thoroughly mixed that it's difficult for either of us to decipher which feeling predominates. Are we grateful about this turn of events, or gutted? And, perhaps the more important question: Do we have to be solidly positioned in one camp to know how to proceed? Or even before we proceed?

That, my friend, is where curiosity comes in.

If the RV sells this week (GULP) (also, you can bet you'll hear about it on Twitter), how might we transform our situation into an opportunity for adventure?

[Note: This is decidedly different from the act of bright-siding. To see the bright side of a situation often requires that we plug our ears and shield our eyes from the less-than-awesome aspects of our circumstances in favor of convincing ourselves that the positives could, in some alternate universe, outweigh the negatives. It usually smells a little desperate because it is a little desperate. On the other hand, transforming a situation requires an actual shift in how we understand the situation. It's looking, like a serendipiter, for the connections between what we really want in our lives and all the pitches the universe is throwing our way in order for us to get it.]

Well, for starters, we've wanted to explore some of the country via Amtrak. Could it be that this is our opportunity to try that for a spell?

Another thing: Months back, we became enchanted with the possibility that Dana's work could send us overseas for a few months—but the costly necessity of storing the RV was a major deterrent. Mightn't this turn of events make international travel more doable?

Opportunity and our readiness for it (really, our perception of our readiness for it) rarely sync up. And if we think we need to wait for them to align before we can act, we're sadly mistaken; we're looking out for the wrong sign, because that just isn't how the universe works; that isn't how we discern the rightness of whatever's around the bend and whether we can handle it. That's why there are adages about striking while the iron is hot and opening the door when opportunity knocks and grabbing the bull by the horns. We have to meet opportunity halfway (gosh, at least halfway). Change is difficult, but recognizing the chance to pivot when it presents itself doesn't have to be.

Hit 'reply' and tell me what experiences you've had (or are having currently) with pivoting and transforming situations.

'Til soon,
Helen

Notes from the week of April 3

CAMPED AT AINSWORTH STATE PARK & ALDERWOOD RV EXPRESS

DISCOVERED

+ Preschool Pocket Treasures (via Shoko Wanger)
+ U.S. postage rates have dropped!
+ the deliciousness that is Tuaca liqueur
+ the articles on Atlas Obscura are consistently up my alley

ADMIRED

+ this couple's resolve to live Airbnb in New York for a year (via my friend, Bonnie)

MEALS EATEN, DRINKS DRUNK

+ a Portland Sidecar & salmon bento box at Mother's Bistro & Bar

READ & NODDED MY HEAD

+ "But why do we feel that we owe each other this place of importance when we don’t make hardly any effort to maintain a friendship in the way it is actually maintained — through frequent, low-impact contact and effort? Friendship happens in the phone calls, the visits, the “thinking of you” gifts, the random text messages. Why do we let all of these slip by the wayside with people we used to love, and then expect that same level of treatment when the big moments come?" (via Fadila Henry)
+ "Still, true friends do exist, miraculously hidden amongst all the situational flux. How do you recognize them? Usually they reveal themselves only after the situation itself has changed. And the results can be surprising: sometimes the people who remain in your life and the ones who fall out are not at all what you would have predicted! But these “friends forever,” however they play out in your particular life situation, always seem to share three characteristics: 1) They have a capacity to grow with you (and you with them) through life’s changing circumstances; 2) They are low-maintenance, rarely-to-never imposing themselves or laying expectations on you; and 3) contact with them, when it comes, is never a duty, but always a gift “heart to heart.” Such friends—always a rare and special breed—have an uncanny knack for being able to stay in tune with you emotionally over huge gaps of time and space. Maybe you don’t hear from them for three years—or 30—but then the phone rings and there they are again, and it’s like picking up as if you never left off" (also via Fadila Henry; lots of finds on friendship this week!)

BOOKMARKED (HAVEN'T READ, WANT TO READ)

+ Vagabonding by Rolf Potts
+ Sporting Guide by Liz Goldwyn

LOCAL COLOR EXPERIENCED

+ Spokane Falls gondola sky-ride
+ Atticus Coffee & Gifts
+ Riverfront Park

FRIENDS MADE

+ Jeff & Wendy

FAMILY VISITED

+ Vicky, Haven, Dan, Scarlett, & Ollie

32: How curiosity can help you break into your own home

April 4, 2016 Helen McLaughlin

STOCKTON DELTA KOA | terminous, ca — STOCKTON DELTA KOA | *terminous, ca*

Last week, we got locked out. Neither of us had grabbed the door key when we parked the RV to register at the Oasis RV Resort in Las Vegas. We realized this after we registered, when we were back at the RV and looking at each other as if to say, I definitely didn’t remember to take the key, but I’m really hoping you did because otherwise we’re screwed. We were, in fact, screwed, and we couldn’t blame each other. Also: We’re newlyweds. Also, also: We’re big fans of declaring most unfortunate situations ‘adventures.’ True to form, my Love Interest (now that we’re married, I figure I should tell you his name; it’s Dana) declared, without a hint of sarcasm, “Well, this is exciting!” I was a little slower to agree. I could feel my face pulling in the direction it pulls when I’m about to feel my feelings out loud without a filter. The space between my eyebrows does something funny. I know this because Dana frequently presses his thumb against that space and massages my skin in gentle circles in an effort to rub out the stress he sees forming there. This time, though, he didn’t press his thumb to my head; he was too busy scheming a creative solution to our problem.

The story gets interesting here, because our usual fix—to shimmy open one of our unlocked windows from the outside—was stymied by my hatch-battening vigilance. In other words, I’d locked nearly every window of the motorhome when we last broke camp, save for the two tiny windows over the dining table. Tiny, like, my head wouldn’t fit through them.

The front desk was no help. Not their fault, but you know, liability and all that. They wouldn’t even loan us a ladder. Or a long-handled broom. Blerg.

Dana spotted a truck (and ladder) belonging to a local motorhome-detailing company. We asked the fellow if he’d loan us the ladder for a short while—we were honeymooners, locked out, how could he not pity us—and he agreed to bring it over after he finished washing the Airstream he’d just begun sudsing and scrubbing. Ever the epitome of child-like innovation and curiosity, Dana swiped a pin from the twelfth hole of a small golf course as we walked back to the RV. We could wait for the ladder or we could get creative. The pin propped against the side of the RV, I climbed onto Dana’s shoulders as if about to engage in the oft-celebrated ‘chicken fight,’ only there was no pool, no bikini, and I wasn’t yet all the way into the safe zone of having fun despite—no, because of—our misfortune. (This would’ve been akin to one of those times when someone jokes about something on the heels of the incident itself, and no one laughs nor cracks a smile; rhetorically, she offers, “Too soon?”)

One of the two tiny windows over the dining table happens to be directly in line with the door to the motorhome. Sheer serendipity. On Dana’s shoulders with the heavy, wobbly golf pin in my clutches (imagine handling a long, thin tree branch with very minimal leverage while perched on your spouse’s shoulders) and my arms extended all the way into the RV (remember, windows too small for my head to fit through), I tried desperately to connect the end of the plastic pole with the little red switch that kept us from getting inside our home. I’d connect the two and then try with all my strength to raise the pin so that its far end would lift the red switch in one swift motion. Have you ever poured all of your effort into something that you know, as you’re doing it, is absolutely futile? I retracted the pin and turned it around without blinding Dana or scratching the RV, and tried flag-end first. Even worse. Out the pin came, once again; I spun it around and took another stab, literally, at the red switch.

I wanted to cry. Unlocking the door was soclose to being within my reach, but it eluded me all the same. In an effort to stabilize my arms and gain leverage to counter the wobbliness of the pin, I’d leaned much too hard against the window sill and had begun to lose feeling in my arms and hands. I had to stop. I needed a break. I whimpered as Dana lowered me to the ground.

At that very moment, the fellow from the motorhome-detailing company came across the golf course carrying his ladder. Two of his cohorts pulled up in a pickup truck with an additional ladder in the back. “He told us,” they said. “We thought we’d beat him here with our ladder.”

Dana unfolded and climbed the first guy's ladder, lifted the pin and extended both arms through the tiny window, fiddling somewhat invisibly for a minute or two. A moment later, he asked me to try the door, so I circled the RV and pulled on the handle. The door sprang open, like always.

When all was said and done and we’d thanked the three fellows with three cans (yes, cans) of Pinot Grigio and we’d gotten one of them to take our picture before we returned the pin to the golf course and we’d laughed and kissed each other and laughed some more, we looked to Dana’s phone to examine the picture proof with proud, googly eyes.

In addition to the triumphant shot of the two of us with the flag-topped pin, there was a pair of pictures (1, 2) that Dana had taken, delighting as he does, while I was on his shoulders, struggling through our adventure. Now, let me be clear: There’s absolutely nothing wrong with feeling the feels, with recognizing that a situation is difficult and irritating and solidly unlucky. That was my head space, and it’s a valid head space. However, I tell you all of this because it’s important to note that Dana and I experienced the exact same scenario, only he chose to fully embrace a spirit of adventure and curiosity from the get-go. As you can see from the pictures he took, he was fully committed to a perspective of fun. I got there eventually (once I stopped silently berating him for not bringing his keys…and myself for not thinking to bring my own set), but what a great perspective to inhabit—why not claim it even earlier?

What I learned about curiosity in the last week: All you need is one tiny (unlocked) window. And an outlook that combines some ratio of enthusiasm and play. For lubrication, naturally. Curiosity—and fun—can slide right through.

’Til soon,
Helen

P.S. Not sure how to get from straight-up frustrated to Dana-levels of excitement? Start by asking yourself these questions: What about my situation changes if I decide to approach it as a fun and exciting challenge? What if I absolutely had to make this fun? What if my very life depended on enjoying the bejeezus out of trouble-shooting this? Email me for more help; I love hearing from you.

Notes from the week of March 27