October 9, 2009

I love it when a plan comes together.  Of course the old A-team closing line always referred to a plan being completed, not the formation of the plan.  But life doesn’t really work in episodic uniformity.  For obvious reasons, this will not be posted in a timely fashion.  I will try to capture our plans as they will be interesting to look back on in a couple years.

I have recently read many of my original posts that captured why we came to Alaska.  One theme was that we were on a journey.  After five summers, Alaska is feeling less like a journey and more like a destination.  This is not a bad thing in itself.  We do still love Alaska.  It is still an adventure to head out into the wilderness, but it is oddly familiar and probably a bit too comfortable.

Our lives can still be distinguished from most people that we interact with on a daily basis.  We get out and do something almost every weekend.  We have had several trips of a lifetime just this summer.  Even in Anchorage, most people’s lives are pretty normal.  Kids, houses, chores, and responsibilities interfere with the opportunity to adventure.  We have not fallen into a rut by any standard, but it is not feeling as new.  The pace of the journey has slowed.  We are pulling into the station.  We don’t want to stop.

Our experience in Alaska has taught us that we can succeed in new environments.  We have built relationships and reputations.  Our egos are difficult to keep in check as the positive feedback flows in our directions.  We are often intoxicated by its charm and even get drawn into the ideas of careers built upon success with the idea of arriving at a lofty destination.  Success is not the nature of a journey.  A journey needs some adversity, but more importantly, it needs motion.  We are ready for motion.

It was never the plan to stay in Alaska anymore than it was the plan to leave Alaska.  We love the place, but we can see leaving in the interest of continuing our journey through life.  If we leave, it will be difficult.  The milestone of exiting the state will be one of sadness.  The sadness will not be the result of regret.  Nor will it be a commentary on our new plans.  Like most milestones, it will be a reminder of what has passed.  We will never again be able to venture out into the wilderness with the adrenaline pumping every time we see the footprints of a large predator.  What is passing is not the ability to go see the footprints or even the predators.  What is passing is the ability to get the adrenaline pumping at just a footprint.  Seeing footprints has become routine.

It is not that we are adrenaline junkies.  The example is simply an easy way to explain how your feelings about your surroundings change over time.  You cannot simply recreate the feelings of seeing something for the first time.  It isn’t the place or the activity that is important, it is how it makes you feel.  While we love Alaska and will always have the fondest memories of our adventures up here, we cannot repeat our adventures and expect the same results.  We need to explore.  We need to explore geographically, culturally, and intellectually.  We can no longer sustain an adequate pace of exploration to maintain our satisfaction.  Like a shark, we need to keep moving.  It is how we breathe.

We have had wild ideas throughout our life.  We have shared many of the ideas along this journey.  For once, we are able to put many of these ideas together into a concise plan, a plan that should play out over the next six years and perhaps beyond.  Here is what it looks like from our 2009 vantage point.

We plan to work in our current positions through the end of this year.  Our goal is to put a little more cash in the bank to carry us through the plan and any potential offramps along the way.  Come early next year, we are planning to quit our jobs, to just walk away from our high paying careers.  We cannot continue in environments that bring us little joy beyond ego and money.  Ego and money are not enough.  In fact, neither is all that important in our concept of fulfillment.  They are more of baseline requirements.  Once the baseline is met, additional money and praise only serves to sidetrack from life’s journey.

Not working again will be nice.  We can ski weekdays again, avoiding the crowds and having the mountain to ourselves.  We plan to make the most of our Alyeska season passes.  We plan to have fun.

We also plan to work.  Our work will involve studying for a couple months, learning more world history and geography and brushing up our writing skills.  In early March, we should be taking a test.  This test is the first hurdle in becoming a Foreign Service Officer with the State Department.  We should be able to score highly on that test.

We have already begun studying.  We have been playing world geography games.  Just the other night I got 100% in Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America, naming every country as it was highlighted on a map.  I still struggle horribly with the island nations of the South Pacific, but I will get those before March.

The next step after the test is to write some essays.  These will be due in the spring.  These essays are intended to show how our personal life experiences can aid our country’s interactions with other nations.  I think we might have a few experiences to draw upon.  Many of those have been documented or referenced in this forum. 

We haven’t decided what to do about residency.  We may decide to sell our condo in the spring just because it is a good time to sell.  By that point in time, we should have some idea on how we are doing getting over the State Department hurdles.  If we sell, we will need a place to live.  Even if we don’t sell, we don’t expect to spend much time in Anchorage next summer.  We expect to make the most of what could be the last summer in Alaska for awhile.  We are planning to by a portable abode.  We plan to live in a trailer.

This has given me a bit of a distraction to pass the time.  I keep looking for suitable trailers and suitable tow vehicles.  I think I can get enough money selling my Subaru to pay for both.  I am looking at used trailers and used cargo vans.  I think the cargo van is the way to go for hauling all our gear and worldly possessions into the next phase in life.  I also think a dinged up cargo van towing an older trailer is a bit less conspicuous.  We could buy new, but we don’t plan to hold onto either for very long so the depreciation hit doesn’t make sense. 

Next summer should be a time to enjoy Alaska in a new way while finally experiencing the RV lifestyle we have contemplated many times before.  We have an idea of ending the summer with an extended stay in Haines.  This gets us down the Alaska Highway a good distance, allowing us to finish the trip to the lower 48 before winter.

Our first destination in the Lower 48 should be Washington D.C.  Sometime in the fall of next year, we should be invited to an oral assessment.  This is intended to test us in a group environment, a chance for the State Department to see how we interact, analyze, and present.  I dread a contrived exercise.  I am not much of an actor, although I have done it plenty of times in life.  I suspect we will both excel in this environment.  I suspect we will pass this hurdle as well.  How well you pass determines your place on the list.  The list is used to select students for training.  Training is likely to begin in the spring of 2011.  After completing training, we would either head to our first assignment or attend language school.  They place husbands and wives together.  When they can’t, one of us could take a leave of absence and find work as an accompanying spouse.  We don’t both have to get through all the hurdles.  Income does not matter in this plan.  A single income will more than cover our expenses.

This does leave a bit of a gap with what to do next winter.  We have a tentative plan of landing in Utah for the ski season.  We should be able to get in some travelling in the lower 48 during the fall as well.

The weird thing about this plan is the whole State Department element.  This was more of something Kris stumbled upon.  When your wife suggests joining the State Department out of the blue, it seems appropriate that you would initially dismiss it, then revisit it, discuss it occasionally, and finally several years later pursue it.  It felt wrong to have a suggestion thrown at me completely out of the blue and simply say that sounds like a good idea.  Within days, we began forming this plan.  We are now counting down the days until we can quit our jobs.  We haven’t committed in any significant fashion yet, but we feel very committed to this idea.  We are rejuvenated, although our jobs are even more tiring as it is that much harder to go to work when you have fully accepted that it is no longer a path that leads anywhere.

The State Department seems like a perfect fit for several reasons.  First, it is a way to explore the world, something that has hit our radar more over the last couple years.  It is a better option for us than the Chevron options for international assignments.  The Chevron options are more limited.  The Chevron options don’t really require you to interact with the local culture.  And the Chevron options require you to take all the initiative on language and pursuit of opportunities.  Further, the Chevron options come with fewer guarantees.  The State Department moves people every couple years or less.  The State Department looks after families and extends many opportunities to them (if one of us should not get in).  And finally, from a safety standpoint, it is nice to know that the power of the U.S. military will be there to extract you quickly if things are going wrong.  Oil company employees aren’t likely to receive such support.

It will also be nice to learn new job responsibilities.  I have run out of options in the corporate world.  I have done marketing, sales, maintenance, engineering, operations, environmental, and management.  The only place that would be new to me would be finance and I don’t really want to go there.  Any job assignment would be much like things I have done before.  The State Department will be different.  Kris may have more places left to explore in the conventional career world, but she will forever be pigeon-holed into IT or project management.  This does represent a real opportunity for her to break those shackles.

Financially, we are set.  At our current income level, we can easily pad our savings account in this last quarter to easily cover our expenses for the next year and a half.   This gives us time to focus on two things, preparing to join the State Department and having adventures.

Every plan must have some offramps.  You never know what life will throw at you.  Of course there is nothing stopping us from returning to conventional jobs.  We know we can land government jobs, perhaps even vest in pensions within the State of Alaska system if something causes a course change.  We have also identified the Peace Corp as a way to break through some of the State Department hurdles if we both somehow get hung up in the process.  We can land in a lower cost of living location and live for years on midterm assets if something goes really wrong.  We can probably even limp through to our retirement years on those midterm assets.  We don’t plan to touch them at all, but they do represent an offramp.  The only reason not to do this and not to jump in with both feet is that we are making so much money right now.  This makes no sense to us anymore.  We want to be doing what we want to be doing.  We don’t need to be making this much money.