hello (again)… back from blog sabbatical

Hello! I feel like I need to re-introduce myself, or moreso, explain the sad silence which has persisted on this blog over the last several months.

For starters - let me say that my blog is not dead. I’ve continuously thought I was ready to get back to it, but life (just as continuously) kept sneaking away from me. So I’m back, and Anya’s still here and the travels are chomping at the bit to be shared.

Here’s what happened:

Last summer, I got a job offer for my next dream job. I know, I said the first job I got out of college was my “dream job,” and that was true! It was remote, it was in a field I’m incredibly passionate about, doing what I had thought (for some time) was exactly what I wanted to do with my career. But as it turns out, I’m learning that early career work seems to teach us as much about how wrong our assumptions were about “what we want” in life as it does about what we do in fact “know” we want. So it was the perfect job for the time, and I learned a ton, and I’ll always be grateful for my time there. But also as it goes in life, a new opportunity knocked at my door that was just too good to be true, and the icing on the cake was that this one gets me back into engineering. It actually happens, that after an internship in college I feared that I really didn’t want to be an engineer at all, unless (I would always say this) I could get a role with a specific engineering team at this specific company. Well, botta-bing, botta-boom, I got it folks. And I’m loving it.

With the new job came some life changes, though. I no longer work fully remote; I now go into an office a few days each week. I actually wanted this change; it turns out to be very difficult for someone as extroverted as myself to work in almost complete isolation (I know, who could’ve imagined??).

With the switch to hybrid work, I thought I would be able to pull of staying in the bus and working remote enough to take long weekend excursions, and then during the week find myself a nice place to park the bus and live out of it like a stationary tiny home. More on this in a moment.

No doors on the bus here, and after some metal grinding and removing the old bus floor mats on the stairs, she was looking a little naked.

Here, my cousin Brad is drilling my doorframe into the bus. Moving in full-time meant I needed to upgrade my safety approach, so the bus doors had to go.

So, August of 2021 I was in Michigan, my home state. With my Mom’s help, I finally got the bus situated for full-time living. I stocked the cupboards with stackable containers that fit perfectly. I got the necessary baskets to have coats for winter, seasonal clothes stored under the bed, and in-season clothes in the closet. All the lights were just right, my espresso machine was on the counter. My cousin even helped me install a real front door (no more bus doors!). Pluvio was as ready as she has ever been to take on the world. Before this point, I’ve only taken off in 1-3 month stints where I was only ever sort-of-half-moved-in, with enough clothes for the foreseeable future and always with good intentions of how I’d add to the bus for “full-time living.” Well, by October she was finally there.

The door was installed, entry way painted, exterior washed, and my Mom and I were loading everything I’d need to live in Pluvio full-time before it was time to take off and move across the country.

My journey began in the beginning of October. I had a month off between jobs (hallelujah!), and I spent the first few days tying up loose ends at home. Then, Anya and I set off once again in trusty Pluvio for a grand road trip across the country. From my home to Indianapolis, through Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona to get to my sister-in-law’s bachelorette party in Hermosa Beach. Spent the weekend celebrating her, then head up the coastal highway the entire way from LA to Seattle, my final destination. I lived out of the bus for my first couple weeks of work, but with winter closing in and RV parks having rules that I had not anticipated (no converted vehicles), I had to switch gears and get an apartment. I still have Pluvio, and still have big plans for her. But I had a friend moving out here too, and no good plan on how to safely stay in Pluvio for winter (safe for myself or Anya) without being at an RV park, so I’m taking some time to live with a childhood best friend and reassess how to move forward with bus life. Maybe Pluvio will become my weekender buddy, or maybe I’ll find a piece of land nearby to park and start building a little glampsite for other nomads to join me. I don’t pretend to know what the future holds, but I’m as excited as ever to find out.

Anyways, the trip was an absolutely incredible month. Full of people that I love and of breathtaking moments, sprinkled with challenges and stuffed with a whole lot of peace. I can’t wait to share the entire thing with you, so after post this I’m going to pick the story up where I left off in the earlier days of my bus life journey.

In case you didn’t know, I’ve been writing my posts so that they follow the chronological order of my journeys. I still have what feels like an infinite amount of “journey” left to share, so though I’ll be writing from Washington State now, I’ll be relying on my stacks of hand-written journals and endless photos to share it all here on my fun little blog.

Thanks for reading, or watching on Instagram, or for the texts and phone calls. A lot of you have been an integral part of this journey for Anya and I, and though life has taken some turns, the bus journeys are certainly not over.

Love ya a latte,

Jesi & Anya