Summer 2016: Digital Gypsy Living
What started as a joke between me and my husband Patrick became a reality in July 2016.
Many years ago in jest I told him that I wanted to be the kind of woman who "summers in Charlevoix."
I did one of my first newspaper internships at the Petoskey News-Review in 1995. I spent a few months falling in love with Northern Michigan and picking up babysitting jobs where I could for extra cash. One of those gigs was in an early 1900s home on Michigan Avenue in Charlevoix.
As soon as I walked in the door, I was hooked. Old, character-filled home? Check. Incredible views of Lake Michigan out the kitchen window? Check. Mom who stays at the vacation home all summer long when the Dad comes up on the weekends? To my early-20s mind, this was the kind of life/view/setup I could get used to. Sign me up.
Fast forward to 2015-16. Patrick and I are discussing going home to Michigan, which, if we're being completely honest, often feels more like work than a vacation. We joked about spending a longer time than a "normal" vacation in northern Michigan and having our downstate families come up to visit.
Somewhere in the joking he asked, with a straight face, "Well, why can't we?" What if we took our kids (13 and 10) home and gave them the kind of summer we remembered experiencing when we were growing up in the Mitten State? Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes, the Upper Peninsula, Mackinac Island, looking for Petoskey stones, eating tons of ice cream ... That is all it took to start the ball rolling. Within a month, we had a house booked.
This would work, right? Would it really be that easy? Have Wi-Fi, will travel? We're both working jobs that allow for incredible flexibility -- I've got a thriving public relations business, he's part of a team of home-based editors for a large media company. We really just need strong, dependable wi-fi and we can work any where. I've done work on the beach in Hilton Head, in a car driving down I-85, even from the kids clothing department of Dick's Sporting Goods at SouthPark mall, but this was different.
We'd really be picking up our lives, including two cars, two kids and two dogs, and moving almost 900 miles away for what would end up being five weeks.
Know what? It worked. Like a charm.
There were a few things that made it doable from a business perspective:
Wi-Fi: The houses we considered only required two things, fast wi-fi and a fence for our dogs. We had a plan B (wi-fi hotspots on our phones), but we never had to use them.
Advance Notice: I let my clients know that I would be physically out of the mix, but that we had one staffer still on the ground in Charlotte to support TV appearances and meetings.
The Calendar: July is slow for businesses across the board, and ours is no different. We had one client event tentatively planned for July, but it was moved, so there was no reason for me to have to be back in Charlotte.
The impact of our adventure really is meaningful to me and my business when you break it down by the numbers. Only two trips to fill up the gas tank over the course of five weeks doesn't mean much to my husband since he works from home. Typically, my work week consists of multiple trips into Charlotte to our office, with a minimum of a 30 minute commute on both ends of my day (more like 45-60 minutes, though ... Charlotte is world-class, y'all).
Meetings require makeup and looking presentable.
The real win for this digital gypsy adventure? I can count on one hand the number of times I wore makeup.
An unintentional win? Developing a pretty severe addiction to Kilwin's Salt Water Taffy (raspberry and coconut flavors only please).
Now, the only question is where will we go and work next?