🗺️ We're Selling Our House & Going Nomad!

This is not a drill.

👋🏻 Hello, I’m Anna. An adventurer, author of six books and Restless Mumma to three small humans. Each week I write about adventure, travel, daily chaos and the inner workings of my noggin’ 🧠⚡️ 🗺️

✌🏻You can check out past posts at the Restless Mumma homepage here.

Hello Restless Ones,

Greetings from the Shire — where I am tumbling through a week of solo parenting while Jamie is in America for a wedding.

We’re leaving one another voice memos each night and he’s telling me what’s going down on his lads road trip (including Nashville - yeee haw!) and I’m filling him in on who has peed the bed / climbed out of a cot / unravelled a whole roll of toilet roll in the living room (true story).

In other exciting news this week, I reached out to the editor who worked with me on five of my previous books (Debbie) and asked her to edit Bedtime Adventure Stories: Vol II. She said YES! That made me do a happy dance. Because I had forgotten how lovely it is to have someone else’s energy added into a creative project.

Now… I just need to convince the illustrator to join me on another wild journey to create the cover for the book. Watch this space.

To this weeks post. It’s a biggy.

I’ll let the words do the talking. Read or listen as you fancy.

Big love,

Anna xx

On Selling Our House and Going Nomad

After coming home from a month of exploring the islands of Cape Verde, and realising that we didn’t want to come home at all, the greatest revelation for Jamie and me was that we didn’t need a house to be happy.

We realised that home, to us, is wherever we all are.

We’re content living out of a few bags, in a small place, with plenty of chance for outside time in semi-decent weather. And, much as I’m fond of Gloucester, we can do that in many other places around the world.

So…

We’re going nomad!

And by nomad, I mean, of no fixed abode. According to a quick interweb search, the definition is: ‘people who travel from place to place to find fresh pasture for its animals and have no permanent home’

Swap the animals for kids, and that’ll be us.

Why Are We Going Nomad?

When life is messy and it feels like there’s a lot to say or to do. I like to begin where it’s the most beautiful. So I’ll start there.

I love freedom. Freedom is my favourite word. I love new places, meeting new people, learning first-hand about weird shit that is of no interest to many others (like the fact that pineapples grow in bushes in the ground or that your nostril hair freezes when you go for a run in -35C).

I love to be immersed. To be amazed, in awe, mind-blown. These things make me feel alive. They make me feel inspired — they make me want to write.

It took me until I was twenty-eight, to realise that there was a way I could make space for these things in my daily life. I just needed to be on the road for it to happen.

My deep love of being in motion could have something to do with the fact I was on the move a lot in daily life as a youngster. My mum is not one to sit still.

It could also have something to do with the fact that we moved home every five years. Within those years, there was always some kind of building work going on. The smell of builders dust is one of the distinctive (and strangely comforting?) smells of my childhood.

Although we only ever moved to another home within a three-mile radius, I like change. I crave it.

I am, like many of the bikes in my garage, steadiest when in motion.

Through the early years of motherhood, I have got to know myself better. I’ve learned about the type of environment that makes me unhappy — feeling ‘stuck’ inside four walls, trapped, with a mental-load so overwhelming that it drags me frequently from the present and into the never ending to-do list.

On the flip side, I’ve discovered what kind of environment loosens me up, encourages me to live in the moment and ultimately allows me to return to myself.

I made a list of the stuff that makes me happiest in this post ‘If Life were a blank page’ but ultimately, exploring the world, being outdoors and being with my family are the things that bring the greatest joy.

Fortunately, my boyfriend/partner/baby-daddy (?) Jamie feels the same.

Since his early twenties, he’s been on the move. He spent a few years travelling in Australia, then cycled from Bangkok to Gloucester, ran across Canada (dressed as a superhero), and then across America too.

When we first met, he was 27 years old and sleeping on a mattress behind the sofa in his parents’ living room — because his Afghan foster brother needed the bedroom more than he did. Jamie doesn’t want for much. And he is also happiest when in motion.

The past five years are the longest that either of us have been in one place since we discovered a love of travel and adventure.

Now that the kids are a little older (4, 2 and 2) we found ourselves asking — can we do more travel and adventure as a family? The answer?

Yes (I think) we can.

What’s The Plan?

Step one is to sell our home. It’s on the market as I type. (Crikey!)

Step two is to leave the UK by the end of the year.

Step three is to seek communities and ‘worldschooling’ hubs where other families like ours are hanging out. The kids having playmates is super important, as is us finding other Mamas and Papas to connect with.

(I have reams of notes about the stuff we’ve been figuring out — the finances, worldschooling, visas. Details of all the worries that keep me up at night (standard) — all coming to you in future posts.)

Slow Travel

We don’t plan to be ‘travelling’ as such. This isn’t us zooming it around the world — sleeping in train stations, darting from one Instagram-worthy hotspot to the next with a packed itinerary and a bucket list.

We’ve learnt from our trips with the littles so far that being in one spot for a while is a good way to go. The kids are better with a bit of routine. They’re more chilled that way and I like chilled. So the plan is to spend three to six months in each place before moving on. To explore… slowly.

If we like it, we’ll stay. If we don’t, we’ll go. We’ll aim for longer stays over shorter ones — and some travel / adventures / chaotic stuff in between.

That way we get the best of both — a feeling of being settled into a rhythm, and then when the rhythm gets stale — we bust out.

We also plan to come back to England for a few months each year to catch up with friends and family, have some mini UK adventures, do some keynote speaking events and keep up with our charity bits n’ bobs.

How Long Are We Going For?

The honest answer is, I don’t know. In my mind, this is us for the next five years. It could be ten. It could also be the case that we do it for a year or two and decide it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

Or we find somewhere else around that world that seems so damn bodacious that we decide to buy some land, grow carrots, get sheep and chickens and seventeen cats and stay. Who knows?

Nothing is forever, and we can always return to a more traditional way of life. It ain’t going anywhere.

The biggest thing I’m trying to avoid is putting any pressure on myself. On all of us. Because gawd knows that a lot of life is given over to living up to the expectations that others have of us. I want to dodge the weight of those expectations. To not feel like we have to do anything to save face, or because we said we would.

Instead, we’ll focus on what feels right for the whole family — leaving space to check in on how the kids are feeling, suss out what they’re enjoying alongside what we are. I want to make decisions that are right at that moment in time. And then to keep doing that as we go along.

When The Good Life Isn’t The Right Life

Now, this is the weirdest thing. And one of the greatest head-screws of the past few months because… our life is good!

It’s nice.

We have a lovely three bed home, and a big garden. I wrote this essay about making a truce with my home because I’m really going to miss our house, very much.

We have three beautiful kids and family nearby.

We have all the things that outwardly say we should be content with where we are at, and I don’t regret being ‘settled’ for these past five years. Goodness knows we needed some stability amid the chaos of having three kids under three. But even though I have merrily gone along this road to get to where we are, I sometimes feel like a stranger in my own life.

I wonder whether I arrived here because this is the kind of life that I am supposed to have? Rather than because it’s the one that’s best for us.

I don’t want for more.

I actually want for less.

I want less responsibility. Fewer surfaces to clean. Less noise. I want (a LOT) less… stuff.

And yet, it’s the strangest thing to be leaving a place, a life, a community which isn’t an awful place to be. There’s a grieving that comes with that. A slow, bittersweet process of letting go. An understanding that, yes, this traditional life is great. It makes lots of people truly happy and that’s beautiful. It’s just not the best fit for me.

The Phases of Change

It’s been five months since we concretely decided about the next, nomadic phase of life. And in those months, I’ve felt us move through three distinct phases:

First there was joy and disbelief at the possibility of freedom, travel, endless growth. Holy heck-a-doodle!

Then there was a second phase of slow plodding along. Telling extended family, and navigating the fallout of that. Sitting down in the evenings to make spreadsheets about income. Gradually de-stuffing the house. Waiting for the garden to bloom because it looks bangin’ in the summer, and that’s when the house is at its best.

We now have arrived at the ‘Crikey on a crumpet we’re ACTUALLY doing it! Phase’ which is a back and forth between practical things to be done and weekly wobble of confidence. Of questioning — wondering whether this is a mistake. Whether I’ll screw my kids up by doing it. Or that we’ll fall flat on our faces at the attempt. The list is endless.

This, I have learned, is all part of it.

How Are The Kids Taking It?

So far, we haven’t made a big deal out of it. It doesn’t seem right to set anything in stone in their minds when there are still so many unknowns and they live in the here and now.

Who are we to tell them that this is an unusual thing to do? For them, it will be their normal.

We have had conversations like ‘We’re going to sell this house to other people and go on lots of adventures together, as a family.’ Four-year-old Storm says she likes the idea of that and has asked about whether daddy is coming on our adventures too (LOL).

We’ve also discussed with her she won’t go to school in Gloucester like some kids do, but that she’ll do her learning in other ways around the world, and hang out with mummy and daddy in the daytime a bit more instead. I asked her what she thought of that and she said: ‘Great!’

To be honest, the lengthiest discussion we had was when Storm said,

‘Mum, mum, is anyone coming over today to take photos of the house?’

‘No.’

‘Phew.’ She heaved a dramatic sigh of relief.

‘Oh, you’re pleased about that, are you?’ I asked.

‘Yes, because for photos we have to do A LOT of tidying up!’

All In All…

I have mixed feelings.

Excitement. Pride at having got here. A sense of liberation. All of which is tempered by sadness for the life we’re leaving behind. The family connections that we’ll change by going.

I don’t know what this new life will look like, and how long it will take to work it all out.

These things are mixed in a swirling cauldron of unknowns — and there’s nothing to do for now but to sit, armpit deep, in those unknowns.

It’s uncomfortable.

But there’s a calm voice that floats above it all. It is unwavering in its confidence.

It says ‘you don’t have the answers yet Anna, but you can figure it out. And figure it out, you will’

So that’s us. This is us. I have a feeling this will be the first on many, many posts on this journey. It’s a wonderful thing to be forty and feel like life is starting all over again.

I cannot wait to share the joys, the cock-ups and tales of a life well-lived, and to have you all along for the ride.

Until next week…. Thank you, as always, for being here.

👆🏻❤️ P.s Tapping the little heart icon at the top or bottom means that more people will see this post, and it mysteriously tops up my writing juju for the following week.