Category: TravelTherapy

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Traveling Therapist Q&A: Considering Travel

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This recent post on the discussion board from a new traveler had so many good questions in one place that I thought I would take the time to answer a little more in depth and share the dialogue more broadly. I hope this helps other therapists who are new to traveling!

I’m a Respiratory Therapist with 5 years of experience and am considering doing Travel Therapy for a few years. The thought of traveling to new states and having increased income is very attractive. However, I do have a few concerns that I was hoping someone with experience could assist me with.

Housing/Insurance

On paper, it appears traveling is a tremendous increase in pay versus permanent jobs and with allotments boost the net even further. My question is if I elect to have housing provided to me and to have health insurance coverage, does that negate the increase in pay? To those who have traveled before: where else could you live short-term (3-6 months) and come out ahead instead of electing to have housing provided?

Yes, taking health insurance through your employer and allowing them to place you in housing will cut into your hourly pay. Insurance will only minimally cut into your pay. For most of my time traveling, I carried my own insurance and was only able to get $1 extra per hour worked into my contract. So, figure $1/hr out of your contract for insurance,

There are a lot of different options for housing, and in my opinion, taking the housing assigned by the agency is the worst option. If you do take housing through the agency, as I did on my first travel assignment, you will find it very convenient. The agency will arrange a nice apartment for you with furniture, ready to move in, but it will cost you considerably. It will take a little more footwork to find a furnished space on craigslist or by looking up local classified ads in the community you are headed to, but you will be able to choose a living space in a neighborhood of your choosing, and you will likely be able to beat what the agency will charge you for housing.

The camper I lived in on Martha’s Vineyard. We had considered a houseboat initially…. maybe next time.

The final, more eccentric option, is living in a camper. A lot of people who plan to travel for a a while in temperate places take their whole life on the road with them. This can also be a more convenient option for travelers with pets. If this appeals to you, the facebook group Highway Hypodermics can be a great resource.

Taxes/Reimbursement

If I work in multiple states as a traveler, are there any tax exemptions? I don’t want to owe a great deal at the end of the year. Will I be reimbursed for travel, new licenses, uniforms?

One of the main benefits as a traveler is the tax free monies you can receive. First is your housing stipend. If you don’t take the agency’s housing, they provide you a tax free stipend – hopefully you find housing for less than the stipend so you can pocket the rest of the money. The second main source of tax free money is your per diem. The IRS regulates both the housing stipend and per diem – a cap is set on each by cost of living in the area code you are working in. If the per diem or housing stipend is low compared to your hourly pay, there may be an opportunity for you to negotiate some taxed hourly wage into a tax free category. It’s one way to maximize your take home without too big of a hit to the agency. However, too low hourly pay compared to your tax free monies can be a red flag for an IRS audit of your employer, so many agencies will have a limit to how far they will push that barrier. With all of this said, income tax laws vary wildly by state and you may find you owe states a certain percentage of your earnings at the end of the year – but this only applies to your taxed hourly wages, not your tax free money. 

It’s good to ask for any potential reimbursements prior to signing your contract. Licensure fees are typically reimbursed. You will usually get a set amount for relocation – anywhere from $500 to $2000 at most (another good area to target for negotiations to squeak in a little more money. I’ve never had uniforms reimbursed, but it sounds like a very reasonable item to ask your recruiter for reimbursement on.

I’m an adult RT therapist with experience in acute and an LTACH, are the opportunities less if my Peds experience is limited?

As long as you are open to new experiences and settings, I think you will find your options wide-open. Traveling has been a wonderful way for me to gain experience in settings I otherwise never would have worked in. After a couple of assignments, my breadth of experiences had expanded greatly and even more opportunities were available to me. After those initial experiences, I could confidently step into almost any setting.

Cancelled Contract

Has there ever been a time when a contract is rescinded prior to start? In that case what does the company do?

I have never had a contract cancelled in 10 years of traveling – except for one time when I broke my arm and couldn’t work. However, it does happen. That is the main risk in traveling and you just have to be willing to roll with the punches and be flexible to adapt. Typically, there is a clause in your contract that allows you to leave a contract with 30 days notice, but you do not necessarily receive the same protection from an employer cancelling the contract (ask your recruiter about the policy for your company). Typically, a facilities staffing needs are well thought out. They don’t hire a traveler unless they need one. If you are a good employee and good fit for the facility, you shouldn’t have to worry about your contract being cancelled.

Recruiters

Since I have a lack of experience in traveling, I also don’t know which companies are the favorable ones. Any suggestions?

I’m going to refer you to this blog post on your first travel job for a couple tips on selecting a recruiter. Basically, if you don’t feel well taken of, move on to another company. There are many, many agencies and a lot of them recognize that the clinician is the commodity. Without us working, willing to take travel jobs, there would be no travel industry and there would be no recruiters – find one that’s willing to make you feel needed.

Surfing Waikiki after work one day. Traveling therapy is the best thing ever.

Overtime

Can you sign up for overtime?

If you are considering overtime, take that into consideration when arranging your contract. Typically, overtime is paid at 1.5 times your regular hourly rate. However, your hourly is going to be pretty low because of all the tax free money you will also be receiving. On one job, I knew I would be working some overtime, so I was able to negotiate a flat rate for any overtime hours to make sure I was making reasonable overtime pay for overtime hours.

It is really going to depend job-to-job on whether overtime is available – make sure to ask during any interviews you have.

Overall, I’d like a good experience and to be able to earn enough to pursue my dream location. I just want to know it’s worth it.

Traveling therapy is awesome. Pay can vary greatly place-to-place. Just weigh your priorities and if getting out and seeing new states and facilities is one of your priorities, then travel is definitely for you!

For other therapists trying to figure out where to start, this link is a great place to get started with travel therapy. Also, don’t forget to follow HoboHealth on Facebook and on Twitter @HoboHealth.

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Onto the Next Travel Assignment

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hoboblockBeing a traveling Physical Therapist requires frequent, and constant change. Week 13 or whatever is the last week of your contract will inevitably be your busiest. Hopefully work slows down a little bit that last week as you discharge a bunch of your clients and transition others to different therapists, but life outside of work gets busy. That last week is full of organizing, packing, working on logistics for travel to the next assignment, and often time actually interviewing for and nailing down your next job (and, if you’re really dense, you’ll try to write a blog this week… brutal).

All the chores outside of work on the last week of an assignment make it a stressful week. I’m currently 3 days from my next move and finding myself relatively relaxed. Clearly I’ve learned something over time about making the transition from work to road trip to work. But what is it? Here’s my reflection on the things you can do to take the crazy out of your next job change.

Acceptance

Accept it! This week is going to suck. At work you’re doing a ton to discharges and transitioning patients to other therapists. Embrace it, every waking hour this week you will be working or packing or planning. The only way everything gets done is by finishing one single task at a time, start chipping away.

Goals

If you can identify one group of things you have to accomplish each day, you will break up the burden. To take everything on in one day is too much. Today, I wanted to take the recycling to the dump, get the tail light on the car replaced before the drive out west, and get out one last blog before disappearing on vacation. Boom! Done! I got stuff done today, I feel accomplished, and I’m a few steps closer to being ready to jump in the car and be on my merry little way.

Say Goodbye Efficiently

Yeah, it’s very unsentimental of me. Get over it. You will get requests from friends, co-workers, and mysterious others  for one last hoorah, a chance to say goodbye. The more saying “goodbye” you can do the week before your last week, the better. Get out ahead of your friends and start inviting people to dinner before it’s your last week. You’ll have a blast, you’ll get to spend some good time with friends, and it won’t take precious hours out of the time you need to be packing. If you get stuck in the last couple days tight for time, invite friends over to hang out at your place while you putter around packing and cleaning – if they can drink your wine and eat your food, you don’t have to move it.

Be Good

Everyone knows you’re busy, but do take the time to do the right things. Wrap up all your paperwork at your job. Close cases that have been left inactive. Clean up your work space – effectively tie up all your loose ends and make it seem like you were never there. They say the best referees in football are the ones you that you don’t notice are even there, same goes for travel therapists.

A Time for Rest

When the opportunity arrives, take a break. I very frequently find I reach a point where I have done what I need to do for a day, and rather than stopping, I press on. You’re a traveler. Hopefully you’re living this lifestyle to experience different places and cultures. When break time comes, get out to that restaurant you meant to go to one more time, or go enjoy one last sunset at your favorite vista. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed the town you’ve lived and worked in for thew last few weeks, take one last chance to soak it in.

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I think that’s all I have tonight, folks. Most of my bags are packed, but I’m doing home care, so the car has a lot of work stuff in it. I need to finish work before I can start packing the car.

From here, on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, we’ll make trips to Maine, Florida, and Italy – for family time and fun – before driving out to Colorado for the next assignment. I’ll post pictures on the travels as I go, but you may not here much from me for a few weeks.

Enjoy where ever you are!

 

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#Camperlife

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Watching football on the camper's big screen.

Watching football on the camper’s big screen.

Kate and I had wanted to live in a camper for a while. We had this old, awesome RV in Alaska a few years back and had always talked about living in one for a full summer. When we accepted our assignments on Martha’s Vineyard this summer, we started looking at apartment rents and quickly realized living in a camper was our cheap way out.

The funny thing is, 5 months of camper living have passed and I barely even recognize that it happened. I had all these grandiose intentions of sharing all kinds of tidbits about “#CamperLife”, blogging about the great advantages of living in a camper and having some great take-away message after almost half a year living in 150 sqft. I posted less during the time living in the camper than I intended. When I did post, it was mostly pictures of campfires. Now that it’s over, I have no revelation, I have no great take-away message, I have no feeling of great accomplishment from living a minimalist life. It just feels… I don’t know, it’s like I’ve simply lived in a small apartment that I really liked.

Our main kitchen for the summer. Cooking indoors will never be the same. The kitchen sink was a garden hose.

Our main kitchen for the summer. Cooking indoors will never be the same. The kitchen sink was a garden hose.

There are a few appreciable improvements on life that are worth mentioning. I spent the vast majority of this summer outdoors. We had a great screen room and deck that was where we spent all our home time – 3 months went by where I didn’t cook a single meal inside. Meal prep happened on our outdoor stove top, grill, and fire pit. All this outdoor cooking and campfiring left me wondering about whether my carbon footprint was really improved by living in a camper. Originally I had thoughts of buying solar powered generators to be really minimalist in energy usage, but our very shaded campsite put the kibosh on that very early on. Our entire electric usage for the summer was about 750 kilowatt hours, my understanding is that for 5 months, that’s a relatively small amount of electricity. I figure with all the campfires we had, that we broke about even on our carbon production – sorry, Earth. I did find myself a little more in-tune with nature through all of our outdoors time. Most days, I could tell you the sunset time within 15 minutes, could tell you whether the moon was waning or waxing, and could describe any recent changes in the flora and fauna surrounding our campsite… so that was pretty cool.

People have been asking, “How’s living in a camper?” It’s fine, it really hasn’t been much of a change from how I like to live. It’s cool that I’ve lived minimally and mildly increased my connection with nature, after all, these are two things I have been looking to enhance in my life. So, if you’re wondering if living in a camper is for you, go for it. Hopefully you’ll have a very pleasant and unsensational experience like mine. Although, now that I think about it, maybe my blasé experience says less about the experience of living in a camper than it does about me. Maybe it didn’t affect me because I’m built for this. Me and a camper fit together so seamlessly that I barely noticed it. Let’s latch home onto the back of the car and keep moving – maybe I could be a traveler forever.

See you on the road.

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Lightening Round

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Grand Illumination Night is a uniquely Martha's Vineyard holiday. A group of a couple hundred small Victorian cottages called The Campground (different than the campground we live at) all hang lanterns on their houses and illuminate them at the same time. We've done some homecare in these houses too - neat, weird little places.

Grand Illumination Night is a uniquely Martha’s Vineyard holiday. A group of a couple hundred small Victorian cottages called The Campground (different than the campground we live at) all hang lanterns on their houses and illuminate them at the same time. We’ve done some homecare in these houses too – neat, weird little places.

I’m going to do now what I do every time I get crunched for time and realized I haven’t posted in over a month, whip off a quick stream-of-thought blog about what’s been happening in my life recently out on the open road. Life right now is in a camper in Martha’s Vineyard, so it makes for pretty easy writing, but it will be a brief one. Don’t expect great grammar, don’t even expect good spellign.

Life has been fast paced and it’s been tough to keep up with the website. There’s been a lot of you reaching out on the discussion boards who are just getting into travel, and we have some good discussions going – so keep it up! I have a couple of half-written blogs for you, but they are posts that require a little more thought, so expect those in a couple weeks. The main thing keeping me busy has been this dang 1/2 Iron Distance Triathlon that I have been training for since I arrived here on the island 4 months ago. It is going to be held right here on the island in just a week and a half, so the end of this crazy, time-consuming training is near. I’m really looking forward to it. The 70.3 miles will cover the entire island and some beautiful vistas, but the training has been ridiculous, so I won’t be doing another one anytime soon.

Living in a camper has been great. I was kept very busy when we first moved in. There were a lot of little repairs that needed to be done. Water heater work, re-sealing some seams, and installing a screen room were the major low-lights of the work. After a few weeks of maintenance and finding out what it’s like to be a homeowner, we settled in and evenings after work have been filled with dinner on the deck and typically a campfire. There’s a lot of things I like about living in a camper, including being minimalist in my consumption of space and energy. The main attraction to the 5 months of camping is being outdoors. I have spent many, many hours on the deck and by the fire. There will a be a couple blogs soon related specifically to living in a camper, so I will digress for now.

Kate working wicked hard on the Vineyard. As I try to claim I've been too busy to write a blog....

Kate working wicked hard on the Vineyard. As I try to claim I’ve been too busy to write a blog….

Being on an island has lent itself to a lot of beach time. Sunday is the big beach day around here. We’ve been captured by friends who throw us in the back of their truck where we drive out onto the beach and create a wagon-circle-type caravan – except instead of keeping women and children in the middle of the circle for protection, there is various grilled meats. Not a bad use of the weekend, every weekend.

Kate and I are both working for a home care company out here. The expected productivity is reasonable, and, being on an island, the driving distances aren’t too bad either. Regardless, it has been BUSY at work. With the seasonal bump of tourists and residents work has been in high-season mode for the last 2 months – Martha’s Vineyard goes from a year-round population of 15,000 to an estimated 170,000 people on island last week! There are signs of the work load letting up a little bit soon. It truly has been a great job.

Just another Sunday on the beach. Great fun carting friends, games, and meats out to the beach for an afternoon of relaxation.

Just another Sunday on the beach. Great fun carting friends, games, and meats out to the beach for an afternoon of relaxation.

The weather has been just absolutely awesome here. We have had about 3 rainy days in the last 2 months – good news for us camper dwellers, and us beach goers. Despite the dry summer, the island life lends itself to insane humidity and with humidity, mildew. Not to wish the summer away, but I’m about ready for some cooler weather so I can stop washing the walls. The campground has really quieted down this week along with the rest of the island. Last night was hoody-weather, but I know we have another month left of solid summer as exhibited by the return of 80 degrees and muggy this evening (peepers peeping like crazy in the trees, love it!). With the change of the seasons, the campground will close and we’ll have to move into an apartment for one month before returning to the mountains of Colorado for the winter.

Expect some more thoughtful and thought provoking posts soon. Among my topics will be new grads traveling, how to select where you want to go as a traveling therapist, and, of course, #CamperLife.

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Locum Motion

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This website is about being a traveling therapist, right? Then, why so often, do I get myself off-topic blogging and twittering about issues in PT and healthcare? Answer: Because I like it. Only once in a long while do the stars of the interweb align so that I can write about travel therapy and healthcare issues at the same time.

We call ourselves travelers. Traveling therapists, traveling nurses, travel PT or OT assistants – we are all “travelers”. But not MD’s, they, call themselves locum tenens, or just locum for short. Locum!? What the heck does that mean? locum tenens; locum – place, tenens – to hold; all together now, “Place holder”. Turns out locum tenens is actually a Medicare term that applies to someone temporarily filling in for another provider. When someone qualifies to work as a locum, they are able to skip a lengthy credentialing process to be able to bill Medicare patients. The list of providers that are currently eligible for locum status during temporary employment include Physicians, Dentists, Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNAs), Nurse Practitioners (NPs) and Physician Assistants (PAs).

There is a Medicare bill currently working its way through congress that would extend locum tenens status to Physical Therapists in certain situations. Currently, in PT private practices, if a temporary therapist is brought in, it can take 3 months to be able to bill to Medicare under their own NPI. Most private practices doing their billing above board and truly the “right” way avoid travelers for this reason. I’m not sure what happens when a private practice hires a therapist through an agency – what I believe happens, is that the private practice bills under one therapist’s NPI. The practice of billing for an entire practice under one NPI, as far as I am aware, is frowned upon, but not illegal. I have done a couple independent contracts with private practices who have made me become in-network at their facility with Medicare, it’s a long process (2-3 months), mostly paperwork, and discourages a lot of employers from getting involved with short-term staff. This bill could change the whole arrangement.

bill

Forget how this whole bill to law thing works? Click above and return to being as smart as you were in middle school.

This new Medicare/locum tenens bill, titled the Prevent Interruptions in Physical Therapy Act (House bill: H.R. 556 and Senate bill: S. 313) would create some exceptions for certain PT private practices. The bill, if passed, would decrease interruptions in patient care that may occur through a PT’s temporary absence due to illness, pregnancy, vacation, or for continuing ed by allowing practices to hire PTs on a locum tenens basis. That would cut out the whole Medicare credentialing process that currently takes place when hiring a temporary PT. While this bill is certainly patient-centric, I do see a secondary opportunity here for travelers. If there’s a current process that inhibits some clinics from taking on travelers (Medicare credentialing), and that process is eased, there’s a lot of opportunity for an increase in the number of available travel assignments. As this bill stands in the Senate, locum tenens status would only be allowed in areas designated as non-Metropolitan Statistical Areas, or areas designated as Medically Underserved Areas (MUAs) and/or Health Professions Shortage Areas (HPSAs) – that’s a lot of private practice clinics that could soon hire temporary employees with less fuss when billing through Medicare. Ideally, the bill would be amended to include ALL areas in the country, not just those of special designation – that would be pretty sick. (it’s a Medical pun, get it?) Be sure to let your Senators know that ALL Medicare beneficiaries deserve uninterrupted access to PT, not just those in underserved areas.

All traveling PTs, everyone in private practice, and all recruiters should be pretty psyched about this bill and should definitely be contacting their Congress Men and Women today. Jump over to APTA’s website to get more information on the bill. From there, you can link straight on over to contact your Senators and Representatives. Get on it now!

SLPs and OTs, don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about you. If the legislative bug gets you revved up, you have good resources to contact the people who represent you in congress. For OTs: http://capwiz.com/aota/home/ and for SLPs: http://takeaction.asha.org/

I do get fired up about issues, and this one is more special to travelers than most issues are. It was too good not to write about, but I realize healthcare politics can get a little dry. I promise more excitement in my next post!

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Camping and Working

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The world of outdoor showers is something I have never been privy to. But here, on Martha’s Vineyard, outdoor showers are a very serious thing. I have been out on home visits with multiple patients 90+ in age who refuse to shower indoors, because, of course, it’s summer and you use the outdoor shower during the summer. Everybody has an outdoor shower here. We’ve been living at the campground for about a month now. Our camper’s water heater has been on the fritz (more on that later), so most showers have been over at the main campground building – quite nice, actually. Good water pressure, hot water, what’s not to like. But, the row of six outdoors shower stalls has been taunting me across the parking lot with the “closed” sign hanging prominently in front. This weekend, that closed sign changed and I took my first outdoor shower on Martha’s Vineyard. I’m a long way from being considered a local here, but an outdoor shower is a good start.

Typical midweek campfire at or site. Loving it.

Typical midweek campfire at or site. Loving it.

I’m currently sitting out by my campfire in the “seasonals” portion of the campground. There’s 180 sites at this place (huge!), that will apparently fill up in the next couple weeks once everyone is out of school and summer really hits. But, we’re insulated from that madness, surrounded by people who have reserved their spot for the whole summer. It turns out that a lot of these people have homes on “the mainland” and go there frequently. Ed and Nancy on one side of us – Ed is mostly here, Nancy is mostly here on weekends – I’ve made up a back story, based on no evidence, where Nancy is a school teacher – she spent the full week here this week, so maybe her school year ended, and my gut instinct about her being a teacher may actually be right. Mike and Kathy are on the other side – they have New York plates and are mostly here on the weekends. I wonder if they’ll stay for longer periods of time once the summer gets going strong – maybe they are teachers too. They usually roll in after dark on a Thursday or Friday. When they showed up this past Thursday night, Kate and I were sitting by the fire, I shouted over the shrubs, “Welcome back!” Mike replied, “You’re cheating by staying here all the time!” It was funny… but I realize it might not read all that funny, so you’ll just have to trust me. Funny stuff.

Pipe wrench in the water heater on the leaky pressure relief valve. If you don't reconnect that tube at the bottom left tightly when you're done, it throws fireballs up the side of your camper.

Pipe wrench in the water heater on the leaky pressure relief valve. If you don’t reconnect that tube at the bottom left tightly when you’re done, it throws fireballs up the side of your camper.

Anyways, aside from a handful of on going projects, camper life is becoming normal. I’m enjoying the simplicity of living at a campground, and, otherwise, there’s not much to living in a camper – it’s just regular life, condensed. My greatest victory so far is fixing the leak in the water heater this week. A series of projects on the water heater led up to the changing of a valve that was spewing hot water onto the ground outside the camper. I may have almost burnt down the entire place (no, seriously), but the water heater now makes great, piping hot water – 6 gallons at a time. I might start taking more showers here at the camper, but it’s tough to resist the allure of the outdoors showers just down the road.

On the work front, we are back in the grind of home care. It’s been a good assignment so far. The schedule is nice and flexible, so it’s been great to get some mid-afternoon exercise before fully finishing paperwork in the evening. And, to top it off, weather has been great, so what more could you ask for than driving around an island for work during the day and hanging out at a campground every night?

Pretty sweet so far, more updates coming soon. This was just a quick one to keep you up to date on what’s happening with us! Hope your summer is going well and, where ever you are, you have some exciting plans for the 4th!

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Camper Life

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The cold has finally broken me. I just went out to the trunk of the car, where our ski gear is stowed, opened up the bag, and grabbed my wool cap. Back inside the camper that we have been living in for almost three weeks, the oven door is open after dinner to help get whatever residual heat we can from it while the propane heater kicks on and off. When I thought of living in a camper on an island for a summer assignment, I tricked myself into thinking it was already summer in New England – just a couple more weeks and maybe it will be.

It feels like I’ve been waiting forever to write anything of substance about the camper we’re living in. I guess, in reality, we’ve only been living in this camper for less than three weeks. I’d like to wait a few more weeks to write anything so that I have some firm conclusions on what life in a camper is really like, but it’s going to be a long process of adjustment. There’s another 5 months ahead to share all the other things that come up, so why wait… this is the first installation of a series of posts on camper life that I will be putting out this summer and into the fall.

Kate and I have lived in close quarters before. On my very first travel assignment, before we were married, I had a studio in Boston that is still the smallest place I have ever seen – at less than 6 feet in width, you could not lay down on the floor cross-ways without bending your knees. The length of the room wasn’t much longer. Just a twin bed, a shelf, and a very, very small attached bathroom. Later, we would live together in far Northern Maine on a travel assignment in a small one-room cabin. I think this was the first time we became aware of “tiny-living” through some blogs like tinyhousetalk.com. The tiny living movement has really caught since then and shows about tiny living appear nightly on HGTV, DIY Network, and the like – or so I’ve heard, since we’re living without TV.

The cabin we rented in Presque Isle, Maine. Fun fact, "presque isle" means "near an island." Presque Isle, Maine is land-locked and near no islands.

The small cabin we rented in Presque Isle, Maine. Fun fact, “presque isle” means “near an island.” Presque Isle, Maine is land-locked and near no islands.

Let’s address the no TV thing. I love it, I just absolutely love not having a TV. Last summer in Hawaii was the first time we went without TV, or at least without cable. The only thing I truly missed was sports. Last summer/fall we would go out for football games or sometimes miss them if the Pats weren’t being televised. For now, since we’re in New England, we’re able to catch our precious Red Sox on the radio nightly, and if we’re out some where, it’s always on TV. Last summer, without TV, completely ruined us for our return to Colorado during winter where we rent an apartment pre-supplied with cable. At first, TV was hard to watch. Having to tolerate multiple minutes of advertisements between brief segments of the actual show was infuriating, but, with passing weeks, the time the TV was on during the day began to grow and my tolerance for ads returned. I don’t think I ever fully got back to my pre-Hawaii TV routine, which I’m proud of, but I did continue to watch far more than I needed to. I’m really glad to be back to no TV. I’m getting more done in my life, relaxing with a book more often, and the radio is usually all that’s needed for a little entertainment, although the Sox need to pick up some slack if that’s going to continue to be the preferred programming. Occasionally, once or twice a week, we’ll treat ourselves to a movie or show on Netflix – a sensible amount of mindless TV.

That assignment in Hawaii last summer plays another interesting role in getting us into the camper this year. The Hawaiian Island of Moloka’i, where we were without the TV, was a very rural and uncomplicated place with a very straight forward life. After work, there was little that “needed” to be done. Life was simplified to working, getting some exercise, and relaxing. Relaxing usually came in the forms of going to the beach, reading a book, or watching the sun sink into the Pacific ocean from a lounge chair on the driveway. I think last summer was the first time I came to truly appreciate a more simplified life, with less going on, and more relaxation – this is the first thing I most appreciate about living in a camper at a campground. We frequently have camp fires and once the day’s work is done, nights can be pretty lazy, or least I expect them to become more lazy once we have settled in and have finished more of the projects that need to be done around the camper.

For now, I’m going to leave the camper talk at that. I realize I really haven’t said much about how living in a camper is going so far, but that will develop over the next couple weeks. As far a life in a camper to this point? I’m having flashbacks to episodes of Tiny House Nation and people talking about consolidating their belongings, coming up with inventive storage solutions, becoming more conscious of their water and electric usage, and having to be more organized on a regular basis to prevent living in total squalor. That’s all you get for now, but I’ll post more soon.

Today, I’ll leave you with the first video I have ever done for this site – a tour of our camper. Enjoy!