Sometimes ‘pop ups’ come up on facebook reminding you of where you were at, or what you were doing on that particular date a year ago, two years ago, or as in today’s case five years ago.

Five years ago today I had posted that what I wished for was for us to sell up, buy a fifth wheeler and a cheap property to rent out, and to hit the road. At that time it was just a dream, a dream I didn’t think had a chance of being realised, or at least not for many, many years.

At the time of that ‘wish’, we had been working towards retirement at the age of 62 (we’ll both be 62 in May of this year). We were going to build a house on our block in Busselton, and buy a little caravan, most likely an A’van, and we were going to spend the summers in Busselton, and go north to Broome for much of the winters.

A brief summary of what evolved:

We did buy our fifth wheeler less than two years after that post, and plans to ‘live the dream’ were evolving. A short time later our house was sold, and by February three years ago we had both retired from everyday employment, and we hit the road full time, proving that wishes do sometimes come true.

It didn’t quite go to plan. We’d hoped to spend at least seven years ‘living the dream’, and travelling as homeless Grey Nomads around this great big country. Dreams and plans often evolve and change, and for those who know us well, you’ll know it’s true when I say ours can change and evolve more often than most peoples. We can change direction faster than the wind.

If you’ve seen the movie, Sliding Doors, you’ll remember that Gweneth Paltrow missed her train, the doors sliding shut in her face. The movie shows two parallel situations, one where the doors didn’t slide shut and she caught her train, the other showing what happened when she missed the train. The end result of both scenarios had her ending up in the same place – only with the right guy.

We often refer to ‘sliding door’ situations, the what would have happened if we’d taken a different path than the one we did actually take.

In this instance, many twists and turns later and somehow we’ve ended up in almost the same place where our original plans would have taken us – retiring by the age of 62, living in Busselton and travelling north for much of the winter, a real life sliding door situation.

We didn’t build the grand house we were going to build on the Busselton block we had. Instead we have bought a quaint little cottage in a similar location, only a few minutes walk from the beach. We have a lovely mid sized fifth wheeler instead of an A’van, and our intention is still to travel north to warmer weather for much of the winters.

We don’t have the savings we would have had, had we continued working full time until we reached this same stage in life, but we have enough to muddle through on.

We’ve had a few adventures on this different road that’s bought us to an almost identical place. Would we have changed any of it? No! I don’t think we would. We’ve seen a lot, yet we’ve left lots to see. We gave up normal employment much earlier than we otherwise would have, and for us that’s a good thing. The actual path we took to get to where we are now, although vastly different than the plan we had been working towards, has still ended up with us living in arguably the best place on earth – Busselton. What’s not to like about that – a real pleasure!