Even though we hadn’t been back, since then, Costa Rica has been a favorite destination of ours but not one we gave much more thought to over the years.
Four jobs later for me (two for Shane), we’re doing pretty well in our careers. He’s the president of an ecommerce company and I’m the CDO and a partner of a marketing agency. But that all changed within a matter of a few months and by June of 2017, we were both unemployed.
As we shared more time together pondering our future, we began to discuss more and more non-standard opportunities. We were both at a level in our careers that great positions don’t come along for that frequently in Boise, Idaho. So, as much as we loved our lives in Boise, we started to consider moving elsewhere for the right opportunity. Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t entirely open minded as we had a combined set of requirements that really limited us to a handful of places that equaled: Bend, Oregon, San Diego, California and maybe Salt Lake City, Utah.
I think I was ready for a change of scenery moreso than Shane so my mind was maybe a bit more open to opportunities we’d never have considered when we were both gainfully employed. One night I was looking at Facebook, something I had almost broken myself of entirely by this point, and I ran across a post that someone liked about a company who facilitated a year-long, world travel adventure for a group of 30-35 people homesteading and working for a month at a time in a new location. This along with knowing another family who’d just taken their kids on a world travel excursion for a year made me propose this ludicrous idea to Shane.
When I brought it up to him initially I prefaced it with “I’m going to pitch an idea the you’ll immediately hate but I think you’ll warm up to…” Sure enough. He said “no way” faster than I could tell him I’d already booked our flights. Just kidding. It wasn’t that bad, but my heart was set on it. I tabled it.
Not long after that, I saw a post – again on Facebook (old habits die hard), by a family that mentioned they were going to Costa Rica. And then I saw they had their house for rent. I put two and two together, did a little more cyber stalking, and learned they were going to Costa Rica for a year – and taking their family. So I mentioned that to Shane and to this he said “Now, Costa Rica, I’d consider”.
I immediately started researching online to find resources and within Prime days, I had a book about moving to and living in Costa Rica. Shane reached out to the family we knew and met the husband for lunch. We were sold. But there was seemingly no way we could pull it off before the school year started. It was mid-June already and there was so much to do. And if it didn’t all come together we could never pull it off. So we hem-hawed and we started to get cold feet. Fortunately, we’d shared our dream with friends.