How Our Gap Year Started

The Unexpected Gap Year:  How it happened

Dennis and I have had several significant life changes in the last five years; some good, some great, and some not so good.  The good: our son graduated college making us empty nesters, and Dennis helped merge PDU with another trophy company.  The great: our two daughters got married, giving us two sons-in-law we love dearly, became grandparents for the first time (it is everything other grandparents tell you and more), and I achieved my goal of obtaining a master’s degree in social work. The not so good: the family business which Dennis had been running for several years was struggling to stay afloat since the recession.  No one wanted trophies or plaques during the recession, preferring instead, cash prizes.  Also, trophies had somehow become an enemy of children’s healthy social/emotional development.

Two days before our younger daughter’s wedding, Dennis and one of his former competitors signed a deal to merge the two struggling companies to make one strong entity.  A happier person you have never seen.  The weight of running the company full time had fallen off his shoulders, and there would be someone to help recreate the company, the proverbial phoenix. 

Fast forward two years, things did not go as planned; we believed Dennis had a five-year contract before his employment ran out.  There was plenty of time to plan our future.  To our surprise, the other partner in the company decided to buy out the entire families’ interest; we and all other family members would no longer be an owner or employed.  We had not expected this in the least.  To make matters worse, I had just given my notice to leave a job that was not what I had expected it to be.  We would be without jobs at the same time.  Panic ran cold through our blood, mine more so than Dennis’.  

Dennis belonged to a professional group, Vistage, that in a nutshell, a support group for CEOs.  He took his concerns to the group and received invaluable advice.  Dennis met one-on-one with the leader of the group several times.  His suggestions to Dennis were to not rush into the next job, take some time to think about what he wanted to do for a living (I nixed mail carrier) and take time to figure out what we want to do as a couple.  He suggested that since we were both unemployed and had enough savings to live on for a year, why not do something we had always dreamed of, a bucket item list. For us, that is traveling across the country in a motorhome.  Our excitement grew as we recalled how, as a young couple, it was something we looked forward to doing in retirement.  Together we decided to take a gap year from work, drive across the country in a motorhome, and plan the next phase of our lives. 

The purpose of our blog is to journal our experiences on this trip, record our impressions of people, and the social norms and values that we experience differently in Los Angeles.