In the last two weeks, my husband, toddler, and I have left our Washington, DC apartment, sold our car, and resigned from a job (mine!) in pursuit of some big life changes. Join us in Ep. 8, to hear:
Check out Episode 8 and others on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts!
***
Have guest ideas? Can't wait to hear what leaps will be next?
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In the last two weeks, my husband, toddler, and I have left our Washington, DC apartment, sold our car, and resigned from a job (mine!) in pursuit of some big life changes. Join us in Ep. 8, to hear:
Check out Episode 8 and others on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts!
***
Have guest ideas? Can't wait to hear what leaps will be next?
Subscribe to Life Leaps Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts! Follow, rate and review us - we're *brand new* so, it means a lot - and be the first to know when we launch new episodes each week:
*ACCESSIBILITY: Transcripts are available for each episode here. (Just click your episode of choice, and then click the "transcript" tab! And if you have any issues at all don't hesitate to reach out.)
Karen Juan Leap
Karen: [00:00:00] I'm really drawing on these episodes as I make my own leap right now.
Karen: Today we're gonna do a little different kind of episode, a leap in progress, and well, it's me, your host. This week is my last at my job as a lawyer here in Washington, DC and on Thursday, that's in two days.
My husband, toddler and I are moving to Portugal at least for a little while. . I've also got my husband here with me in the flesh. Juan, hello. He is less than excited about this episode.
Karen: He's a little stagefright, but game on. , He's my behind the scenes editor and teammate in all the things life related [00:01:00] and he and I are gonna help explain why we're leaping the thing that kind of sparked it, which may totally surprise you. I think it surprised us and how we plan for it, why we're doing it, and how this podcast has actually helped in that.
Juan: Yeah, I don't think either of us can remember whose idea this was, but here we are. .
Karen: Yeah, here we are. A really quick backstory. I've been a lawyer for over a decade here in DC though I grew up in Charleston, South Carolina. Went to school in Georgia and I met Juan here. We both have, I think, always had an adventurous spirit but have always balanced that with really safe career and financial choices.
We lived cheaply before we met for years in group houses with lots of roommates well, six, seven roommates. . Yes. Well Into like, probably two, well into our professional lives. So we could still save money while living well in an expensive city. So I did law. . , But the public interest do-gooder type that pays your heart and you know, like eventually also [00:02:00] your wallet, but not in the way that kind of lawyers most people think of get paid. But I remember the first day of law school orientation, walking across the courtyard and like crying. Because I didn't, it's not
Juan: funny, . It's the best thing I've ever heard .
Karen: Because I didn't wanna go to law school and I felt like I was supposed to because, I wanted something safe.
I wanted something that in my mind at that time, felt was a legitimate thing to be doing. And the grownup thing. And so I did, But I sometimes feel like there are other parts of me that don't get space or that I don't get to breathe life into, which was the impetus in part for starting this podcast.
Karen: Just something new, something different. But I think that was when I met you, it was finally someone else, like a kindred spirit in that way.
One also for over a decade was in the same career doing technology stuff for a consulting firm.
Yeah.
Juan: Like technical architecture [00:03:00] and project management, And I think for a really long time, we both have been saying, we could see ourselves exploring something different later.
Karen: We could see ourselves traveling, we could see ourselves maybe switching careers, but it was more of a far distant way that people talk about things. Like, Ah, yes, one day perhaps I will go sail the Greek water. Or is it, you know? yes. What we all say and you don't really know how serious a person is about it or not.
I guess we kind of were Yeah. , we were serious about it. . So anyway, we met, got engaged, got married.
Got a dog, got a cat, got a kid. Had the kid I did anyways. And , COVID hit during all of that, I think while we were in the process of starting to start a family and all that. And having our son Luca really changed everything.
Yes, in the ways you would think oh my gosh, what is sleep and what am I doing? But it also changed our perspectives and impacted us in other ways.
You wouldn't expect. , like it made us really think what do we want [00:04:00] for our lives right now? What did they look like before and how could we engineer them to look more like what we always said we wanted?
Juan: Yeah. I think having a kid really puts everything into perspective that you want everything you want, teach your kid, you wanna embody it.
And so I think one of the things we want Luca to be is to be, courageous in his actions. And it pushed us to be courageous in our actions. And this is something we wanted to do. So we said, why not go ahead and do it now instead of in some distant future? I realized that I wanted to be a person. that considers risks. But does the courageous thing,
Karen: That's really lofty and gorgeous of you to say For me, I was like, so sleep deprived.
I think my inhibitions you, they say that people who get no sleep behave like drunk people. and drunk people do crazy things. , it was in that new parent haze that Juan and I really started [00:05:00] saying, what does life look like after this? And I remember you going back to work and me watching Luca, cuz my leave was a little bit longer than yours. . And, the crazy hours that you had worked before Luca took on a totally whole new meeting cuz you worked in technology where anything could come up at any time.
And I remember again, like the crazy work hours, which had been a drag before and a, and we weren't happy about them, but when I was watching Luca again, it took on a whole new meaning. And I think it did for you too, right?
Yeah. Or no? I don't know. Tell me I'm curious.
Juan: Yeah. But I think we've always wanted an alternative or a different lifestyle.
because I look even before Covid, right? Like we, we traveled around the world for nine months and when we took off on that trip, part of what we wanted to do was figure out alternative ways of living and [00:06:00] find out and see other people living totally different ways than we're used to.
Karen: So I guess I should mention, we, a couple years ago, pre Covid in 2019 got the other crazy idea not that long in maybe two years into US dating.
Was it, was that all . Yeah. Maybe like talking about it. Yeah. Two years or less into dating. We were both, the next thing we knew, just like planning this trip around the world and we talked about it and what made it real was, I think Juan found this book, how to Travel the World on $50 a Day. I think
Juan: you found the book.
I found the website workaway.info, which
Karen: was basically places you could go to volunteer in exchange for room and board. . that would give us groundedness structure. Community. Yeah.
Juan: That's something that was important. A it was made it financially more feasible and B gave us more structure.
Karen: I think we knew we couldn't just be straight up backpackers. Yeah. Or two type A for that.
So we ended up [00:07:00] spending, I think it was like $9,000 each.
Karen: Yeah. For nine months of travel. Anyway, so we did that and I think that was a really big confidence builder for us. Yeah. I had a recent episode with, Jody Scissors, who was a teacher, turned many other things including herself, podcaster, and she talked about that.
She didn't realize it at first, but she had actually always been a person who had left. And she talked about other new things she'd done her life having lived in different places because of her husband's job. Having accepted a new family with her husband's family. Just various things she had done that had made her a leaper without even knowing it, which I think actually could apply to all of us.
And so she was drawing on that and making her own career changes. I actually, I think that is true for many of us and for us right now. I that was a big confidence voter for us. And before we did that, we were probably drawing on other experiences we didn't even think about that.
We had, courage as a muscle kind of , oh Now I'm really episode quoting. Now I'm quoting episode three. But so we did that, but we [00:08:00] came back and
Juan: we came back and it was wedding planning. Yeah, we got married then it was the holidays, gosh, you
Karen: really glossed over the whole got married thing pretty fast.
Juan: Just kidding. And then Covid hit, right? I don't think between us coming back from our trip around the world and covid hitting when we were forced to be at home we really had that much time or space to explore other ways of living.
We didn't we didn't make that space.
Karen: So you're seeing this more as the completion of another leap? Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because we had both intended to fully quit our jobs in 2019 when we went to travel. Yeah. And we both got extraordinarily lucky and that both of our
Juan: places of employment we were able to get leaves of absence. And so both of our employers held our jobs for us for those nine months we were gone. Now we didn't get paid, but we knew that when we came back we would have a job.[00:09:00]
We didn't, in the back of our heads, I don't think know for certain, like what if we find other career passions that we like while we're traveling? Maybe something magical will come upon us and we'll decide on a totally different life than the one we had before. And that never really happened.
Juan: yeah. Yeah. And I think like the lesson from thatI don't think these things just happen, right? Like people have to make them happen. You have to make that leap. And I think we both were expecting we'll travel around the world and we'll have some magical epiphany of what we wanna do with our lives, and it didn't happen.
. But we still, the back of our heads, we had talked about what it would look like to have a different career, a different way of life in a different place.
all that to say we didn't change our lives that much when we got home.
Juan: No, when we got back, I mean we had a, we got a dog and a cat and a baby. We
Karen: got a lot of depend. In fact we anchored ourselves. Yeah. when we got back we got a lot of dependence and then we were in lockdown, and it didn't make sense to us in that moment, especially since we were talking about trying to have a kid. to be making any more big [00:10:00] changes We were basically like , our heads down, thankful we had jobs and that we weren't still traveling when all this craziness happened. Yeah. And we went to like conservative mode. Yeah. In terms of saving money, lifestyle choices, very inward and locally looking. Yeah. And I think we
Juan: felt very we were just lucky. We felt very lucky cuz it was, it felt like the world was falling apart during Covid and we were cozy working remotely.
The worst thing for us was we couldn't leave our homes or travel, yeah.
Karen: And then what happened? We had, so
Juan: yeah, so I think we wanted to have Luca we had a kid. . And I think then the world's starting opening up again. And for you, I remember one time you came to me and said, I there are three things that you know, we both want And they are somewhere exciting, somewhere cheaper. So we can try different careers and not have to depend on our current salaries and somewhere warmer because we wanted to be somewhere warmer. And when we had, I think when we had [00:11:00] those in mind, we're like, all right, where do we want go? And we started thinking about different places.
Yeah. Cause now I'm remembering also we were, This was when the housing market was crazy. we looked at buying homes or moving to Atlanta or Charleston or Florida or, and none of those things felt right. I think that's what it was. None of those things were things that like really sparked joy in us, if you will. Whereas the thought of moving abroad really did, we were both excited by that idea. And one of the things that I think were really instigated the, we really set the fire. was that I reached out to somebody who I worked for literally 11 years ago.
In France, because was looking for people to work for him for something that I really wanted to do. And I reached out to him and he was super excited and we talked, and it seemed from the conversation that I was gonna be able to move to France and work for him.
He was very, both [00:12:00] very excited and it was really exciting.
Karen: And when you brought it up, I remember being like, you were like, would you do this? And I was kind of like, yeah. . Yeah. And that
Juan: sort of planted the seed. That's what it was. We were like, oh my God, this opportunity, this is super exciting, let's do this.
And then ended up going nowhere. Like nowhere yeah, it ended up going nowhere, but it planted the seed. . And so then from there on, we're like, okay, this is what we wanna do. And we started working towards it, trying to figure it out.
Karen: And we defined our three criteria, which is number one had to be cheaper than dc. Number two had to be some sort of a setup. We created whatever place we lived whatever lifestyle we built had to be conducive to each of us. Like exploring new professional things and or creativity related things.
At the time you knew you wanted to change careers. At the time I knew I wanted to at least try and flex more creativity muscles in my life. And we had started writing, we co-wrote this short, funny illustrated book for new parents.
That was like our [00:13:00] own coping mechanism to early newborn days. . And it was your idea, you were like talking about the difference, you were making jokes about the difference between what you as a new parent think life will be. And when you look around on social media, what it looks like for other people.
Versus looking what it actually is in the trenches. And I found you at 5:00 AM or whatever random hour of the morning, like writing it like you think you'll be able to do this. Haha. Just kidding. Just like deliriously writing these funny things.
And I think it became a really big outlet for us that's still in progress. Bottom line.
I knew I wanted more stuff like that in my life. And so that was number. and number three was, excites us because we were like, look, we could fulfill options one and two by living in a trailer in the middle of, the desert.
But that doesn't feel good for us for our lives. . And so we were like, it has to be, there has to be a third component that's this makes us feel warm and fuzzy. So we were googling places just straight up Googling like what are places that is really low cost of living, but really high quality of living, [00:14:00] still has good healthcare, still feel safe, you can bring a small child and has visas that will let people like us who might be able to earn money from abroad or take jobs with us be able to stay there for a little bit longer term. and warmer. Oh yeah. And warmer and
Juan: Portugal kept topping all these lists. And so we started more seriously researching it and we saved a good amount of money. I was able to find a job. that I can wor, that I can take from anywhere in the worldand there is, turns out a really cool strategic advantage to him spending some time in Western Europe to do that job.
And so we eventually ended up saying, you know what? Let's do it.
Karen: And now we're going, I don't remember us even sitting down one day and specifically saying Portugal within there, but we knew Western Europe, Portugal was the most affordable. Portugal had the Visa program, although Spain does too. Maybe we end up there eventually. .
Juan: Yeah. I think, back to what we were saying about just have to make it happen, we just said, you know what, let's just buy tickets and go, let's just, I think once you buy tickets, that's a big thing.[00:15:00]
Once you buy tickets, we just we're leaving this date. So we got, and actually even with that, we bought tickets for November and we had to cancel them cuz we realized we're not ready. And luckily we bought refundable tickets, but we realized we're not ready
Karen: Oh my God. We were first gonna go in September. Yeah. We had this idea. We were gonna go in September. We were like, September It is. And then we pushed to November. I don't even know why.
. And then we were like, but the holidays, we wanna celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas and New Year's and we pushed the thing again. I think we rebooked those tickets like four times. . Yeah. Did we buy refundable ones this time?
Juan: No. This last time we said it. We just gotta go . Stop by. Refundable tickets.
Karen: Fourth times a charm. , I guess we'll know in two days when we actually board the plane. so what are we doing in Portugal? The plan. , there is a plan. The plan is we're we planned to . See the thing is,
Juan: What is the plan? Tell me.
Karen: So yeah, that the plan is, right now, it's a working plan, but we're flying into Northern Portugal and Porto. Because that was [00:16:00] where we were able to use some miles to, to go most affordably.
And we've gotten Airbnb booked for the first week. I think we'll figure out the next week, then we're gonna go , then we're gonna go meet some friends in northern Italy for some, another sort of plan to get together with some people in our lives. But after that February onward, I think the plan is I guess create some semblance of stability and a life there.
And so stay tuned on that, but , a lot of people. I think not having a stability in terms of where to stay or what to do is the stressful part of all this. To me, logistics or logistics, we can handle that. There's always an Airbnb, there's always something.
But I am quitting my job. So for the first time, Really ever in my adult professional life, besides little spurts, like again our trip around the world, parental leave. That's really it. I am losing my identity at least temporarily as a lawyer, which is it's of a big thing in some ways.
And so I'm putting that aside and again, that's because my particular [00:17:00] job, I cannot take it abroad. I cannot do that. And that's, how does that make you feel? ? It makes me feel apprehensive from a financial standpoint. This'll be my first time living off of, we have savings, but also like your salary.
And that's something that I had to get used to. Just not earning my own money for a short time will be different. I think that I perhaps unknowingly, cuz at the time I wasn't certain I couldn't take my job, but. Whether it was on purpose or not, the fact that we cooked up these other creative projects through like the book that I wanna pick back up and start working on again, that we started this podcast.
Like I think I'll have things that I'll breathe life into more that'll keep me afloat psychologically in terms of purpose, perhaps, ultimately professionally, I don't know. But I think I go back and forth between feeling like, oh my gosh, what am I doing? I'm creating this vacuum between that and Oh wow.
I'm clearing out this space and I get to see what grows there, what [00:18:00] fills it. What that looks like. Yeah. How are you feeling? I'm
Juan: excited. What are you scared of?
I think just financially not working out. What would make it financially not work out? Yeah. I don't know. I guess it's like a, it's more, it's just as expensive, right? Like with being a foreigner,
Karen: so it doesn't fulfill one of our big pillars which is, has to be cheaper than dc. Yeah. Which also is what's allowing us to do take the pay cuts. Cause I think I sat up in the middle of the night last night and said, oh my gosh I've got it. And you were like, what? And I said, oh yeah. And I said, I was gonna ask you about that. Maybe it's that we no longer want to do the jobs that allow us to live in DC and live well.
, it's it's a cycle. We have to earn certain salaries in order to live in this expensive city that we wanna be in, at least in the way we wanna live in it. , and so it becomes this cycle. And it's funny because, in the last month or two when I was really trying the different [00:19:00] angles of potentially bringing my job abroad and would that work or could I have been another leave of absence the way I had before several years ago and when the answers in this situation were no.
I think I told you this, it was telling to me that, I was for a time deeply disappointed that I couldn't take the job. I was a little scared But I told you like there was never a moment when I was like, we shouldn't do this because of the job. , there was never a moment where I was like I guess we should just stay in DC and continue things as they are And I think that is really telling when you're making a decision. Yeah. okay. So what is something that you are most excited about?
Juan: just waking up in a new place that I've never been and being a foreigner I'm excited about just being lost, like nano knowing the language and trying to figure out,
Karen: you realize that would scare most people, right? But you're, most people would say that's scary. Is that's so that excites you. [00:20:00] Yeah. Yeah. And we, yeah.
what scares you the most? the scariest thing has always been for me is finances.
when it comes to money, my mind always goes to the worst case scenario financially.
Juan: And so talking through those fears and stop gaps I can put in place and things I could plan and prepare for, so that those worst case scenarios do not happen. And like I said before like understanding the risks and being aware of them and being aware of how you can mitigate them as best as possible, but not letting fear in this case, right?
The fear of worst case scenario of financial destruction, not letting fear dictate how we act or how I act. And realized that if I didn't do these things, it was because I was afraid. , that's the cause I wanna do them and I think they're the right thing to do. But if I didn't do them, it was because I'm afraid And so I didn't wanna let fear dictate how I act.
And what kind of things would you say that you put, I think I, I, because I've had these fears like [00:21:00] my entire life and these anxieties I'd already put in place, like I said, like we, we lived very frugally. We've saved money. We don't have any debts And so I guess those were the logistical things that were put in place and then all that was left really were the psychological ones. And then, talking through those psychological ones do you have a car payment? Do you have devs?
You wouldn't be able to pay, do you have savings And luckily for me, because I've been so worried about it, I was able to answer yes
Karen: What finally made this real, you say for you it was like, Luca made you wanna be more courageous.
For me it was also this moment of oh my gosh, life is so short . And I really wanna be spending my time in the ways that I wanna spend it
And for me, there's no one thing. It's not like I think we're gonna go to Portugal and and now this is our new life period. , I think now this is our new life, semicolon dash I don't know, punctuation's, not my strong point. What [00:22:00] whatever comes next, ellipses, whatever. It's like this.
I wanna, we wanna try something new. , I think it's more like this is us showing ourselves that we can, and we'll take a next step to give ourselves a little bit of financial breathing room by living a little less expensively.
Hopefully have a little more time on our hands and explore and figure out what's next
Juan: And what made it real? I think just back to something that I think, during the holidays we, I would say extended like family of family passed away and, we were aware of other people passing at relatively young ages.
And I think that also, that's right. There's an end to this and you never know when it could be. And What better time to start living how you want to live than right now. In
Karen: the last two weeks we've given up our apartment, we've given up my job. , or my last day, I guess is on Wednesday.
And we are about to sell our car. Like in the next day or two. And yeah. It's getting more real.
How do you feel?
[00:23:00] I think I'm finally reaching a place of excitement. I think with big life changes, especially ones like involving a lot of logistics, there's excitement when you finally decide , and when you conceive of the idea, . And then there's a whole lot of just putting your head down to the grinder to make it happen.
And then there's just been a lot of grinding. Like the
Juan: last week has been pretty, I don't wanna say it's awful or bad, but it's been tough for us. , it's it last month, yeah, the last month, all of the logistics that come with moving and moving somewhere else. Two days ago we got tickets for Luca.
Karen: Yeah. I didn't realize we didn't have a plane ticket for Luca .
Juan: So it's been stressful and like it hasn't been fun. Yeah. Like I wouldn't describe any of the past week as fun.
Karen: No. And it's funny because people keep asking me like, oh, you only have your first week booked. Of where you're gonna stay. Except for the couple weeks in Italy, . But in terms of long term where y'all will stay, you don't even know what town you're gonna be in yet.
. And for me, that's not a problem for me. The problem is all the things I have to do to get to that space where I can finally have a clear enough head to figure the [00:24:00] logistics of all that out. , so yeah, I think right now we're very much in the grinding phase.
And I think I'm starting to see the end of it and I think as often happens with a big decision or a trip or whatever, you get on that plane or you finally cut it off and you're like, wow, okay, now this is really happening. And I don't know what it'll feel on the other side, but I guess we'll do some podcast episode updates here and there.
In the coming weeks, months, whatever, as we figure that out.
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Till next time, next Wednesday on Life Leaps podcast.
Rosie Stafford Smith: Definitely did not expect that I would be an entrepreneur, [00:25:00] so that's not something that I ever set out to do. I come from a family that had very linear career paths
Life Leaps Podcast: I was just like, I wanna help people solve problems and I love working with people and I knew I had the raw ingredients,Till next time,