My Story

​​My story can go a lot of different directions depending on who's asking, what head space I'm in, what just happened in my life, etc... But for the sake of everyone reading, including myself and my own sanity, let's start from the beginning of the dream! 

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I have always been a visionary of the future and someone who LOVES to dream.  In my mind, anything you want to do, you can do.  I truly believe there is nothing stopping you from changing your circumstances except yourself.  And so, for me, growing up I knew I could do anything I wanted to do, go anywhere I wanted to go (as long as I wasn't grounded and had my car... if you know, you know), and be anything I wanted to be!  This thought always THRILLED me, because how fun is it to have the world as your oyster?!  When I was in my 20's, I made sure to do and see as much as I could, and if I was unhappy with my situation, I would brainstorm until I could find a solution I was happy with.  Then I met my husband Jaren, online and 2 hours away, and the dreams amplified but also changed.  The things I wanted to do were no longer the most important thing, and sharing my life with him became my new dream, and I was okay with that!

I moved out to Lancaster, Pennsylvania where he was living for work and forged a new way of life, ready for whatever would come my way!  Except I wasn't.  Let's just say, you can take the girl out of Jersey, but you can't take Jersey out of the girl.  BOY was that hard for me!  I thought, "This is great! New adventure, closer to my fiancé, wedding planning, countryside in Amish-land..." until I realized I was a square peg in a round hole.  Not only that, but a lot of other pillars in my life were starting to shake and living in a new town away from family and friends while planning a wedding became extremely difficult to take on.  Our wedding planning came and went and before we knew it, we were married on September 1, 2018, which was the most magical day! 

* Side note: If you are planning your wedding and trying to cut cost, DON'T skip out on the photographer/videographer! * 

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After the wedding, things were still fun and new and exciting, but also different.  Have you ever noticed how there are moments where nothing changes but EVERYTHING changes...? Like that moment when the person you like finally talks to you or asks you out, or how someone tells you a secret and all of a sudden, things feel a lot different?  It's like this new knowledge or awareness changes and affects how you see everything, although nothing in the immediate and physical environment has changed.  That's sort of what it felt like to be married.  I had already been living in a different state with a completely different way of living far from my friends and family for a year, so that wasn't new.  But after we got married, something inside me changed.  It wasn't a bad thing, but it was something I had no idea would make a huge impact by not dealing with it.  As an only child who was fortunate to have a great upbringing and support from all sides, I did not adapt well AT ALL.  And if I'm honest, I had a lot of extremely difficult life-changing events happening behind the scenes that drastically affected my ability to handle these new life changes.  So, needless to say, Jaren is a CHAMP because I am not easy to deal with when I feel out of control of my circumstances and unable to change my situation.  I'm a visionary who can change her situation any time, right? Not when you're married and want to stay married!  Truthfully, the first few years of marriage were extremely taxing on both of us.  

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So, why did I just tell you all of this and what does it have to do with RV life and "the dream"?  I'm getting there, I promise!

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So, there we were, struggling in ways that maybe most people struggle when it comes to communicating.  I was growing increasingly weary of living in Lancaster, which to be fair, there are a lot of great things there.  But for me, I felt so stuck and any brainstorm session I would have with myself to change my circumstances became increasingly more defeating, realizing I couldn't just up and leave because I wanted to.   It wasn't until we had a "fight-discussion" while folding laundry that we both realized neither one of us were happy or content with the life we were living.  In fact, we were both intentionally avoiding sharing our actual dreams with each other out of fear that the other person wouldn't want to pursue the dream we held so near and dear, leaving us fearful of losing the idea of the dream altogether.  It was easier to keep the dream tucked away and never try achieving it, than being vulnerable by sharing it and possibly discovering it wasn't something the other person wanted at all.   This discovery was a GAME CHANGER.  After this realization (and lots and lots of therapy all throughout our marriage on my end, by the way), we finally united to figure out how we could assess our goals and merge them together.

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April of 2022, we had our first Goals Retreat right at home in the kitchen and it was the BEST START to our pursuit of envisioning a new way of life!  We assessed our personal goals, our personalities, who we are as individuals, our likes, our dislikes, the thing that drives us most in life and the things we do, and discovered we had a lot we could work with!  Jaren is way more one-track mind: Music.  Broadway.  Playing music on Broadway.  While me, I was more about the way I felt in the life I lived, the way I lived it, and the people I shared it with!  Turns out, that pairs well with a one-track mind since I can do those things anywhere!  And that's where the vision took off.  It didn't happen fast by any means, and took a lot of patience, prayer, and quiet diligence to get us where we are today; two years actually!  After a lot of job changes, goals retreats, networking on Jaren's end, downsizing for 2 years on my end, prayer, and faith, God blessed us with where we are now: traveling with our RV on the Broadway tour of Back to the Future the Musical!

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Now that makes it sounds like it wasn't so bad, and things are absolutely AMAZING now!  Well... you're not wrong.  But there is SO much more that has happened and goes on behind the scenes of what it takes to live this life.  Like "What does KL do on tour?", "How do you know where you're staying next?", "What do you do all day since you only have the show schedule to follow?", "Don't you have a cat?", "I know you just shared how you got here, but how exactly did you make it happen?"?  And that's why I'm here!  To recount all of that and more, for myself to remember since eventually one day I won't (insert The Notebook reference here), and for anyone interested in hearing more.  So that's it!  That's my story, and I'm sticking with it!​