I am writing about our big life move while living in an Airbnb on the west coast. I am right now sitting on a simple white Ikea-style table and a comfy chair while the loud AC is working in the background on energy save mode. There is also an air purifier at my feet which we bought after my debacle with asthma last week. I have observed that this Airbnb decor is straight from an Ikea - kitchen table, sofa, bed frame, and two simple shelves which is functional but it lacks basic kitchen amenities like 2 forks, a chopping board, and small things like a grater.
In an hour, I will start making us some dinner and I am thinking it will be chicken pesto pasta and maybe some salad, we will see. Oh and by the way, I spent this morning on three big things-
Started using a continuous glucose monitor aka a cgm
Cleaned the bull out of this Airbnb including the toilet
I ordered weeks worth of groceries from instacart
I can say that it almost feels like home now, almost. I think we all get very excited about the idea of traveling and living in Airbnbs. This has been a dream for me for many years and I am right now living it but now I know what all goes with making such a big change.
I want to get personal and tell how we landed here and what from here…
I moved from New Delhi to New York City at the peak of virus havoc last year. I moved to get married to the love of my life and for the last 1ish year, we both were living very happily in our small but cute 1 bedroom house in a very decent area in NYC. Even though it was just 600 sq feet, it never felt small to us. We both worked in the same living room for over a year. We also had several members of our family & friends over for days and weeks and it still did not feel small. But we felt like it was time to move to a bigger apartment simply because we were now talking about expanding our family plus we would love to give our guests, a proper bed rather than a couch for the night. So, we started looking for an apartment and if you know anything about NYC housing, you know it’s not easy to find a good apartment in a good area with a good price.
We spent the last couple of months on streeteasy and took some trips to jersey to see if we find our next dream house there. Few places felt good but we decided that we needed time till the end of the year to bite the bullet and we were at ease with our decision.
We knew we needed this time to lower my hba1c which is ideal to start a family. Then things changed...
It all started with one silly morning.
My husband, Jonathan has this habit of writing a stream of thoughts and ideas to spark his creativity & get the brain juices flowing. That day, he wrote 10 ideas on how we can shake our lives a bit. One such idea was to travel around for some time.
Honestly, reading this should have given me great joy as, wow, we get to travel and see the world more. What can be better than this? I have traveled a lot within India but haven’t seen much of the world and of America so it is very close to my heart sort of dream but that morning when I read his sheet, I panicked. There were many other options on his list which seemed not important at all. But this “travel around” part stayed on my mind. I was surprised that even though this has been something I wanted to do myself, I was scared to actually do it.
I asked him if he was serious and he shrugged it aside for that moment. But the box was now open and we were subtly talking about the likelihood of this life. It was more like we were flirting with the idea, teasing our minds with the possibility of living on Airbnb and seeing a new part of America or maybe a world like this. We were supposed to travel to the west coast for 2 months for his work and we thought, well this will give us a good change in life.
Then a month ago, out of nowhere, we received a letter in our mail from our landlord to renew our lease for a year. This shook our plans.
We went for many long walks in the next 1 week and after a lot of discussions, we both felt like this is a good opportunity for us to not only do something new but also experience a whole new side of life that we otherwise will not be able to do so. We did not want to become travel nomads as we both have careers to think about and we want to think about our careers. We also did not want to spend a crazy amount of money on hotels or fancy travel destinations. We both felt like we love the idea of slow travel more than anything else. We love seeing new towns slowly like by living in them rather than taking 2 days to see all the big attractions.
Personally, I feel that whenever I go to a new place, I like to settle in and be like the locals. If I go with a company of people to see the city attractions, I do like them but I also feel like I haven’t gotten enough from just this. Instead, I prefer going to local markets, and cafes, walking the neighborhood streets, taking local commutes, and seeing new attractions along with it. It’s strange that Jonathan is also almost like that with just one addition on his list – he loves doing all that frugally. I am also pretty frugal but not at all like him. He is smart with the ways he does things and because of that, we save enough to splurge on amazing things once in a while, like last night, we went once again to this really nice Italian restaurant in Santa Monica and order anything we wanted without a care in the world.
So rewind 2 weeks ago, we started packing our house, found a storage unit that fit our budget, and got 2 movers for lifting heavy stuff as I am still dealing with a back issue. The last night, we cleaned the empty love nest, ordered lenny’s pizza which was the first thing we ordered on my first night there and finally we dragged our blue convertible couch on the streets. Said an emotional goodbye to our beloved house in sunnyside and hailed the cab with our 3 suitcases to the west coast.
This is us, at the moment with everything we need for now. Honestly, I still sometimes feel a little scared that we don’t have a house but at the same time, I feel thrilled that we are doing this. I have a motto in life that we should take risks, we should experience new changes even when we are a little scared of them. Life is short and I know that so very much- I feel that with every finger prick I do to test my blood sugar. I want to value each moment of my life I did not care much about before my diagnosis.
So here we are now, in this Airbnb which is far from perfect but giving us the joy of trying new things and feeling fresh.
Also, I have no clue where we are going after LA. We have some ideas and some desires and I will keep updating you all on what is new with the Bechtel-Pawar household. But for now, this is our life. 3 suitcases worth of belongings, a new Airbnb, and making something of ourselves while we also see a new city and maybe a country at some point.