dream

Hurricane Fiona

| jamiefeinberg

We’ve experienced hurricanes before. Living in New England, we’d catch the tail end of them occasionally, and in Florida, we experienced one in an RV, prepped with a go bag, near a bath house, and fearing we’d get COVID if we had to flee. (Luckily for us, it fizzled out by the time it was near us.)

Suffice to say, though, that when we moved to Prince Edward Island, Canada, we didn’t expect to encounter hurricanes.

I’ve been becoming more and more aware of my “prepper” tendencies. They increased significantly when COVID-19 came into focus in 2020, and finding the balance between prepared and hoarding can be trickier than you might think.

As we got wind a hurricane might come out way, a part of me felt it would be healthier to just use the food we had at home. And when my car started acting up, it meant I would have to shop on foot. But I am so glad I headed out Thursday for essentials, and Friday for a few more I couldn’t fit in the first trip.

Hurricane Fiona was no joke. We lost power Friday night, and as of this writing, I think our street is probably still days from it returning. And when 95% of the island lost power and nearly everyone it seems lost trees or gardens or suffered damage, gratitude isn’t hard to come by.

So I continue to offer gratitude. For a radio. For enough food. For access on foot to places to charge devices. For kind islanders offering food for a donation or a coffee. For all the privileges that set us up well for this. For past experiences that strengthened me in following my intuition and preparing accordingly.

I am about to launch a pilot of a mental fitness program that’s been transformative. I use the skills multiple times throughout the day, especially under our current stressors. Due to our power situation, I haven’t finalized the details in a pretty way. But if you’d like to be one of the first to try the program out with me, I’d love to hear from you. Leave your email below, or contact me at Rossandjamieadventure @ gmail.com for the details. If you’re ready to take charge of your life and move the needle on getting out of your head and into a meaningful life that lights you up, let’s chat. I’d love to send you more info and learn about where you are at and what you’re looking for.

And wherever you are, stay safe, and take care. You’ve got this.

Booking Hard or Hardly Booking?

| jamiefeinberg

Ross and I have been hard at work. I’m following a weekly schedule I’ve created for myself, and it keeps me busy. Mornings I blog or work on my book and work on building our business, and then most days I do arts admin and Human Resources contracting I’ve been hired for. Teaching in the afternoon or evenings is also a part of my day.

Ross, on the other hand, is hard at work pounding the pavement for short-term employment, remote work as a podcast/audio editor or composer and bookings.

Hence the blog title. Some days, it’s easy to get fed up that we don’t have more success with bookings. I’ve reached out to at least twenty local churches in the past week. Ross had reached out to a similar number of venues, and he’s applied for at least that many jobs. When your rate of return is low, it’s hard not to feel like you’re hardly booking anything. We’re still establishing a name for ourselves in Florida, and it’s not an easy market to break into without contacts.

But from what we’ve read, the key at this stage is numbers. The more we ask, the more we succeed. 1 out of 30 isn’t a great rate of return. But 10 out of 300 could get us enough work for the next 4-6 months, if we got the right types of gigs. And the more we ask, the more those people forward our emails…so things could grow exponentially if we play our cards right. How nice would 50 out of 300 be?

So the effort continues. And in between, we’ll talk to Groot at Disney World.

We’re Getting an RV!

| jamiefeinberg

Closing is set for Friday, June 10. We’ll be looking at an RV payment of $211ish per month plus whatever we pay for insurance (expecting a quote by the end of the day)…and we are so excited! It’s beautiful and it’s very us and we can’t wait. Keep those fingers crossed that all goes as planned and that we can find a cheap (to us) car under 2K to keep us on budget. Hoping to have her moved in to her summer home (is it a her? Ross, any thoughts?) by the following Sunday!

The Big Reveal and the Beanie Baby Purge

| jamiefeinberg

Well, it’s done. I gave my notice at my full-time job. While I am not yet ready to announce my RV plans to the world yet – we need to wait until the summer so I can keep my church job – I am delighted to announce that after May 29, I set arts administration aside, at least for now, and can focus on other things.

Am I excited? Ridiculously so! I wouldn’t say a giant weight has been lifted yet – much of the weight was definitely caused by financial stress – but for whatever it’s worth, I am not as tired or quite as stressed. So yay for that.

I am also happy to report that last night, as I ran a purchase by my mom (fleece t-shirt quilt to use all my old tees) and talked about how much progress I am making with purging old clothes and my grandmother’s beanie babies, she sees genuinely happy for me. She encouraged me, congratulated me on my progress and asked thoughtful RV questions. I am so glad I got the telling her part out of the way to give her room to do her mom thing. She’s a good mom, even if she doesn’t always understand my way of thinking, and she’s usually right about things. 🙂

Handling Ross’ finances is proving to be exciting, in that we can try new things to pay down debt, but also disappointing in that there isn’t nearly as much room to trim our budgets as I’d like. So I need to get back to work for Judy and hustle some more lessons ASAP. My first north country voice student (minus a few vocal coaching sessions) is tomorrow, so I am looking forward to that.

It’s also hard to make frugal food purchases when you are trying to lose weight (both of us) and hoping your diet can help fix your body (me). I have been doing a great job so far – trying to keep my food budget to $30-40 per week – but Ross is buying a lot of his own food too…and it is just a lot of work to choose which fruits and veggies you can afford if you need a lot of dairy products, for instance. I know we will keep refining it though…lots of things will get easier when we are on the same schedule too.

The next step for Ross is promoting his solo album. Meanwhile, I need to not only make more money, but start getting on top of RV planning. Hoping we can set up an RV appointment this week for the spring.

That’s all I have for now. Thanks for reading!

Feeling Groovy

| jamiefeinberg

Okay, maybe not Groovy, exactly. But certainly healthier than I was a couple of weeks ago. Today I have a “preliminary” interview for that long shot job opportunity. Still a long shot? Absolutely. But it will be good for me to have a conversation that looks ahead.

The minuses if I were to get this job are obvious – no motorhome tour, at least right away, we’d have to move to a city that at least on the surface wouldn’t be our favorite thing, and I’d have all the typical challenges of becoming a teacher.

The pluses? A built in simplified life that combines my theater work and my need for income (at least for as long as I can keep it that simple) and maybe even a summer vacation, which would make returning to Canada for regular visits more feasible. Not to mention good benefits and a clear next step.

In any case, it’s got me thinking more about teaching and how much I like it. Whatever the ending is, I’m sure teaching will be a part of my work moving forward. Wish I had weeks to devote to cleaning and organizing my life – so much to do, so little time!

My groovy feeling usually involves rainbows -I love them – and my closet is oddly becoming less of a rainbow than it used to be. Why? Well, I’m realizing that my favorite ways to dress now involve a color palette that lets me interchange clothes and dress easily. So I think when I’m done decluttering, my goal is to have two palettes, with only an occasional dress or shirt to mess with the vibe. The colors? Probably blacks (for theater and music, of course) and brown/pink/purple/tans, which has become my go-to and I absolutely love it with my complexion and my vibe. We shall see if this holds, but I think the writing is on the wall.

Have a groovy day!

Feeling the Freedom to Dream

| jamiefeinberg

After I wrote my first post, I had a couple of challenging days. I’ve never done well when the dark of winter sets in – I’m one of the many that have a very tough time functioning without sunlight. But I’m re-orienting myself to waking up early – and I’m finding that if I start one small de-cluttering project, that’s translating into more energy for other things.

Two days ago, I stumbled upon a job listing. I really wasn’t looking for a job. As I see it, the job I have is basically perfect, except that it’s too exhausting for me do forever if I want to also do theater. In other words, not going anywhere any time soon because it is awesome overall and allows me a fair amount of freedom to live my life as I want to.

But this particular job listing looked too amazing to ignore. Do I have a chance? It’s a long-shot, a big long-shot. So I figured, what the heck, I’ll go for it, polish a resume, and see where it leads. But you know the really amazing thing? Because I’m already on the path to a tinier footprint and a simpler lifestyle, the idea of altering my plans completely and moving and starting a new job in August of 2015 just isn’t that big of a deal!

A year ago, I’m sure I would have been worried about how in the world I could make that happen. But now, even though I have an INCREDIBLY long way to go, I’m seeing the progress, and I can look at my apartment and say, sure, you can get rid of half of this stuff and move by August if you have a reason to. No big deal!

It’s definitely the small victories. I’m very thankful that Ross is willing to make regular trips to drop off recycling and donations, they pile up fast!

‘Til next time!IMG_0603