Travel Recap: Statement Event & Camp Mustache 2018

The month of May has FLOWN by in a rush of excite­ment and fun. I’m hav­ing trou­ble com­ing to grips May is almost over and June is almost here!

Part of the rea­son May was such an awe­some month was the trips I took at the begin­ning and end of the month. I looked at my trav­el sched­ule (not some­thing I’ve ever real­ly had before!!) and real­ized I was going to be in NYC, Seat­tle, LA, and Philadel­phia in short order. I decid­ed I would play a game called ULTRA TOURIST and make sure to get in some com­plete­ly over­rat­ed and fun tourist activ­i­ties while in each city.

Despite my fun atti­tude towards all the trav­el, I was actu­al­ly fly­ing for busi­ness rea­sons. The fun touristy stuff I had to sneak in 😀

Statement Event

May start­ed off with me fly­ing into New York for a new event called State­ment. This event is for women entre­pre­neurs who run most­ly online busi­ness­es. There were blog­gers, authors, pod­cast­ers, coach­es and more in atten­dance. We hung out at this beau­ti­ful house in the Catskills while par­tic­i­pat­ing in the retreat. Each woman got her 30 minute turn in The Hot Seat for advice and sug­ges­tions on how to run their business.

Mine was bru­tal, but amaz­ing. Going to State­ment was the thing I need­ed to adjust my mind­set after quit­ting my job (that I did­n’t even know I need­ed!). I had­n’t tak­en my efforts to build stuff online seri­ous­ly until after I quit. I need­ed to think of them as busi­ness­es from the get go and that’s some­thing I did­n’t do. Now I’m much more into the build a busi­ness mind­set, a shift I cred­it direct­ly to the amaz­ing women I met.

I learned every­thing from the prac­ti­cal (how to do canned respons­es on Gmail) to the hypo­thet­i­cal (what am I try­ing to accom­plish? what do I want to be?). I also deep­ened my friend­ships with a few of the atten­dees and formed new con­nec­tions, which if you know any­thing about me I am ALL ABOUT.

After the event, I found myself in New York City, so I stayed the week­end! I got to con­nect with an awe­some read­er (thanks for let­ting me crash with you, L!), explore the city a lit­tle bit, hang out with the NYC FI crowd at the Our Next Life meet­up, and hang out with friends from the 2017 Chautauqua.

I also found it inter­est­ing that I did attend­ed this event when I did. I was a month out from quit­ting my job and still in the mid­dle of per­son­al upheaval. For any­one that wants to do what I did, I strong­ly rec­om­mend against it. Don’t quit your job, move to anoth­er state, move in with your sig­nif­i­cant oth­er, and try to spin up online endeav­ors ALL AT THE SAME TIME. Learn this les­son from me. I could do one, maybe two, of those things at once, but not all 4. It was too much. I pret­ty much went through a major iden­ti­ty crisis.

I would say I’m on the upswing now, but it might still be too ear­ly to tell. I under­es­ti­mat­ed how much I had tied myself to the mon­ey I made. I had­n’t tied myself to the iden­ti­ty of the job, but with the feel­ings that came from earn­ing a lot of mon­ey. The loss of steady big pay­checks hit me hard, espe­cial­ly with big expens­es still going out. I was also com­plete­ly blind­sided by those feel­ings, so be pre­pared for a recal­i­bra­tion peri­od after you quit your job. Work­ing allows you to sweep things under a rug and not think about them, but once you quit your job be pre­pared to deal with issues you’ve been avoiding.

My time off work has­n’t been all hard work and iden­ti­ty cri­sis, though. I’ve had some fun too, like when I went to Camp Mus­tache 2018.

Camp Mustache 2018

This was my sec­ond Camp Mus­tache in Seat­tle. You can read my recap of CM ’16 here! I was struck by the dif­fer­ences between the two expe­ri­ences. It was the same event, but I am dif­fer­ent so it was different.

Last time, I had to fly in on Fri­day and arrived late — like almost missed din­ner late. Thoughts about work still crept in and I was also tired from long hours at work. Mon­day I had to go straight to the air­port after camp was over and fly home. I did­n’t get home until 3:30 am and was at work by 7 am the next morn­ing. I did­n’t have any spare vaca­tion time, so I had to com­press the trip and it was not fun.

This year, I flew in Thurs­day after­noon. My pod­cast co-host J and I host­ed a meet­up for the Seat­tle FI crowd which was A TON OF FUN. It was at Gas Works park which is super cool and has amaz­ing views of down­town Seattle.

Fri­day I was able to hang out with friends dur­ing the day and explore Seat­tle (part of my tourist quest, don’t for­get). I got to see Pike Place Mar­ket, expe­ri­ence the dis­gust­ing cool­ness of the gum wall, and see the Ama­zon Spheres.

Then we got to dri­ve to Camp Mus­tache, get there on time, and be ful­ly present while meet­ing and hang­ing out with a ton of awe­some peo­ple. I was able to focus sole­ly on hang­ing out and turn­ing strangers into new friends. My week­end was­n’t ruined by the knowl­edge I had to go back to work.… because I did­n’t have to go back to work. Which feels super great, btw. Not to rub it in too much.

This year, I did­n’t go on the hike up Mt. Si. I remem­bered how destroyed my legs were after I did it in 2016 and saw no rea­son to suf­fer again. It’s a seri­ous hike with seri­ous­ly amaz­ing views, but I doubt the views changed too ter­ri­bly much in 2 years.

We ate lots of great food, had won­der­ful­ly deep con­ver­sa­tions, played fun board games and sports like cro­quet and vol­ley­ball, and just gen­er­al­ly enjoyed being around like-mind­ed peo­ple. J and I changed it up a bit and record­ed some of the sto­ries we heard while at Camp, so you’ll get to meet some of the peo­ple we did and hear their stories.

Two of the peo­ple at Camp Mus­tache weren’t real­ly strangers. I met JT at Fin­Con last year so I enjoyed get­ting to know him bet­ter in a less crazy set­ting. He brought his wife along to Camp Mus­tache so I got to know her bet­ter as well. I’d talked to his wife, Tam­zon, before as he encour­aged her and sup­port­ed her to join our first Mas­ter­mind group. She CRUSHED it! She is super cre­ative and crafty so her Har­ry Pot­ter qui­et books are going over great on Etsy. You can hear her talk about her expe­ri­ence with anoth­er group mem­ber Kevin in our lat­est episode on FIRE Drill.

Speak­ing of the Mas­ter­mind group, J and I are open­ing anoth­er round TODAY (May 30^th, 2018). Sign up quick before spots run out! Check out the video I did that has more to say about the 3 options you could sign up for:

Shoot me an email or hit me up in the com­ments if you have any ques­tions or con­cerns. I sin­cere­ly hope to see some of you in the groups!

What’s Next

Com­ing up, my boyfriend and I head to LA for a lit­tle bit of sun, fun, and relax­ation. We’re going to be hang­ing out with the WoW’s and meet­ing up with the LA FI com­mu­ni­ty Sat­ur­day after­noon. Let me know if you’re in LA and want to meet up and I’ll get you the deets.

I have no oth­er trav­el based plans for June, which actu­al­ly feels pret­ty great giv­en all my trav­els recent­ly. I like spend­ing time at home and get­ting work done, weird­ly enough!

Thanks for read­ing! Have you been to an FI meet­up late­ly or trav­eled to a cool loca­tion? Sound off in the com­ments below!