Goals and Intentions for our 2021 Airstream Journey
Traveling in an Airstream has been a goal of mine for years.
But how many times has a dream become a reality only to… kind of fall flat and disappoint.
One of my favorite ways to make sure that you make the most of your dreams is to create specific goals and intentions for your year.
As we entered into this totally new phase, we wanted to be really specific about what we wanted to get out of our time as a full-time travel family.
And by the way, you can do this exercise with any goal or season of life, it doesn’t have to be a crazy decision like selling everything and living on the road.
Here are the nine goals Brian and I laid out for our time on the road.
Healthy daily habits.
Brian and I want to continue investing in healthy daily habits and lead by example for our kids. We want to work hard play hard, eating colorful foods that fuel our bodies, and practicing our GGMM every day. Read more about GGMM, our daily, family-wide morning routine here!
We want to be in the best physical, spiritual, and physical shape of our lives, and see what our relationships and lives look like.
More time outdoors than indoors.
We’re traveling the country full-time because we want to see more of the world, not more of the inside of our Airstream. This can feel overwhelming, but when you break it down, we just need to take it one day at a time. Each day, more time outside than inside.
Read more.
I’ve had “read more” on my to-do list for literal years, and it’s always fallen to the wayside. But because this is a family goal, and something Brian and I want to model, we’re figuring out a way to incorporate it into our evening routine. You guys know, if I want something to stick, I make a routine out of it! So now, we’re making time to read books to our kids every night before bed. I’m hoping it’ll help foster a love of reading throughout our family!
We’ve started with the first set of Junie B. Jones books, and the kids have been loving them so far!
Strengthen our family and our marriage.
If you’ve read Sleeping with a Stranger, you know that my marriage and my role in our family has constantly transitioned over the past few years. This year, Brian and I are continuing to press in. We’ve already spent the past year quarantined together, so why not take it a step further and live just the five of us in an even smaller space!
We know that the five of us make a family. Family isn’t a place or a house. It’s us.
Know that God lives in us wherever we go.
We know that God lives in us, but living it out makes it even more real. It’s amazing to see that He still has plans for us and is near to us even when our location changes every day! We’ve left our normal life, but we’re still seeing God live in us every day, wherever we are.
Learn outside of a traditional environment.
Since we’re schooling on the go, we’ve had a lot of opportunities to see what it looks like to learn in non-traditional ways and not hop on the school to college to job train. Each city gives us new opportunities to appreciate new ways of learning and expressing.
Even seeing beautiful landscaping that my kids try to trample is a good opportunity to explain that we need to be respectful of the landscape around us because it is someone’s art!
Experience other place and cultures.
This one might be obvious, but it’s good to have it written down so we can remind ourselves that one of our goals is to appreciate and experience the places we visit. We don’t want to sight-see, we want to find the hole-in-the wall places that locals love.
Cultivate our strengths.
I’m a huge believer that we’re born with natural strengths and that we can find our purpose by following our strengths. I’m excited for this non-traditional lifestyle so we can have our eyes opened to different strengths.
Serve and give back.
We’re so blessed to be able to live this adventure, and living smaller has given us the chance to see more needs and meet them in the ways we can.
These are the things we’re keeping our focus on as we take this journey that has no expiration date. When we do our monthly planning meetings, we know what to focus on and we can track how well we’re meeting our goals!