Well, our two year mark came and went this October, and we were so pleasantly busy with work and fun in New Hampshire that we didn’t take the time to call it out. But in the aftermath of Thanksgiving and with our stay here ending, it seems appropriate to take a few minutes to talk about what we’ve accomplished and where we are at now.

When we hit the road, this blog was something I updated inconsistently, with sometimes daily and sometimes monthly posts. Now I have a weekly post that I’m quite disciplined about sticking to, and though the format varies, I think we’ve honed in on what it covers with more certainty now. I’ve also kept the same level of discipline with my ice cream blog.

When we hit the road in the fall of 2016, we were mostly living off of savings. We had a rough plan to book enough work to live on, but weren’t actually sure how to make that happen. Now we’re currently able to earn about a quarter to a half of what we need for income online, depending on the month. So while we’re still depending on outside income sources (like campgrounds and arts organizations), we have a growing base of remote work and some clear goals and benchmarks for how we can make our remote work more sustainable and sustaining. (One wonderful way you can support our work is through supporting our businesses, whether you need a podcast editor, want to commission a song or a jingle, take online music lessons from us or hire us for social media/marketing/writing/editing and other virtual assistant work.)

When we hit the road, we had no clue about booking. We may still be learning (constantly), but we’ve had gigs from senior centers to libraries to coffee houses to bars to churches to yoga classes, and we’ve taught lessons as well as performed in communities from Tucson to Orlando, from Boulder to Maine.

We’ve made several good friends that we remain in contact with, and we’ve been able to maintain and strengthen existing relationships through meetups with friends and family who have moved or traveled while we’ve been on the road.

We’ve taught an introduction to ukulele class for older adults, an eight class series, that has now been tested successfully with four different groups of adults. We’ll soon have a great promotional video that we can use to promote those classes too. We’ve also proven that Ross has a wonderful ambient music set for yoga classes and that Ross and I make a great music performing team. We’ve experimented with composing together as well.

We’ve sampled some of our country’s best gluten-free eats (hello, Colorado!) and have had outstanding ice cream in cities and towns across the country. We spent almost six months of our lives at Disney World, spent many days at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and fell in love with both Silver City, New Mexico and Fort Collins, Colorado.

As we say goodbye to New Hampshire, we are incredibly thankful of all of the family and friends who’ve gone out of their way to see us (and spoil us!) during our time here. Thank you to everyone who purchased a meal for us, collaborated with us, hosted us and everything else in between. And to those we weren’t able to see this time around, we look forward to visiting with you when we return – or when you meet us out on the road!

We do have to admit that we’re happy to say goodbye to the snow, the ice and especially to the frustration that comes from plans that are disrupted due to weather. We’re looking forward to a warmer winter, with lots of sun and daytime highs in the 50s and 60s, and while we’ll miss our family and friends, the quiet and relative isolation of the communities we’ll be returning to in New Mexico will give us the perfect opportunity to hunker down and build our businesses.

As we head into year three, it is with a renewed intention to build successful remote careers on our own terms. Thank you for coming along for the ride!

p.s. I may spend a future post exploring some of the fun we had here in New Hampshire it. There’s been far too much of it to cover in one post!