On Sunday, September 8, after dancing down the aisle to Salt-N-Pepa and King Floyd, we committed to spending our lives together in front of a room full of family and friends.
It was the most incredible, soulful, and beautiful weekend of our lives. For those of you that joined us, THANK YOU. And for those of you that we didn't get to celebrate with in person (because real talk: how can all the people we love possibly fit in one room??), know that you were there with us too.
About 30 hours after the wedding ended, we were on a plane to Bali for a luxurious, crazy, and beautiful honeymoon for 2.5 glorious weeks. We visited temples, made ceremonial offerings, swam, got massages, ate incredible food, and met the most wonderful people.
After that, we got back to NY, jumped in Betty, and made the drive from NY to Florida in about 48 hours to celebrate Grandma Shirley’s 90th birthday and the Jewish New Year. Since then, we’ve visited friends in Atlanta, had an awesome night out in Nashville, camped and hiked in Kentucky and Missouri, skipped on the Yellow Brick Road in Kansas, crossed the Rockies in Colorado, made friends with some cows in Utah, and drove through a blizzard in Idaho.
As usual, it’s been a whirlwind. And for those of you that we haven't gotten to catch up with in a while, it’s time we shared what we have in store next.
When we started on this journey, it was with a mission to:
Minimize: Live a more minimalist lifestyle, allowing us to spend time and money on the things that matter most.
Grow: Invest in our personal and professional growth via experiences like work stays, educational programs, time with intentional communities and more.
Explore: Travel this beautiful and complicated country to enjoy natural beauty, expand our horizons, and make it to all 50 states.
Contribute: Give back to the people and places we visit, and leverage our trip as a vehicle for good.
Find Home: Search for places, communities and practices to build our future home.
We’ve done pretty darn well on achieving these goals (if we may say so ourselves). Despite some initial resistance, we’ve grown to truly love our new minimalist practices, and deeply value the way they simplify our lives. We’ve gained countless new skills (we are surprisingly good at finding the most level spots in an open field or parking lot) and took real time to learn about this country (ever hear of the proposed state of Jefferson?) and ourselves. Mat officially made it to his 50th state and Rachel is now at 48 (we’ll see you eventually Arkansas and Oklahoma)!! As for contributing, our attempts at volunteering didn’t work out as well as we’d hoped, but we found lots of little ways to support the people and places we visited, like picking up trash, supporting local businesses, and joining the local Democrats in Pennington County, South Dakota, where we're registered to vote.
Now, it’s time to work on the final goal: finding home. Of all the places we’ve visited, Oregon is one of our favorites. We love the weirdness of Portland, the unbelievable coastline, and the fact that even the cities have signs pointing to hiking trails. To be honest, it just feels like our kind of place. But as we all know, the Pacific Northwest isn’t exactly known for its sunshine…
That’s why we’ve decided to spend the rest of fall and winter there, to see what it’s like in its worst months. If we love it, awesome! And if not, we’ve got a home on wheels and can go try someplace else.
So…what will we get up to over the next few months?
We’ll start by finding a home base in Oregon. We’re looking for sublets, housing swaps, or a house-sitting opportunity, and we’d love your help finding them if you know anyone! We’re most interested in the greater Portland area, but we’re also open to Salem, Corvallis, the Willamette Valley, and the coast.
We’ll visit different places and talk to the people that live in them. We love small towns, and are intrigued by intentional communities. We want to learn about life beyond the bigger cities, and look forward to exploring what Oregon has to offer.
We’ll enjoy some stillness after 14 months of constant motion and can’t wait to cook in a full kitchen, become regulars again at neighborhood spots, and maaaaaaybe even live out of more than one room.
And of course, we’ll do meaningful work to sustain all of this. After a well-deserved sabbatical from the music and entertainment industry, Mat will take a break from all things Betty to pursue new professional opportunities. And after spending time this year on developing new services that include 1:1 coaching with social entrepreneurs, Rachel will continue to grow her remote impact strategy practice (more on that here).
And that's the plan!
Looking back at these last 14 months, we’re profoundly full of gratitude. We’ve gotten to see more of this country than most people get to in a lifetime. We’ve gotten to live a lifelong dream that we shared before we even met, and didn’t think we’d get to live out for a long, long time. We’ve had the opportunity to follow our curiosity and live spontaneously, taking ownership of our time by slashing expenses and mitigating the need for daily work. Most importantly, we’ve built a stronger relationship than we ever believed possible, learning to thrive together in a 25’ home on wheels in the year leading up to our wedding. We couldn’t think of a better way to have journeyed from our engagement into marriage, and we can’t wait to see what the future has in store next!