a glimpse at our plans for the next year

As usual, we don’t know much about the upcoming year. We have some goals and ideas, but we’ve developed a much looser grasp on all of that the last couple of years as plans come and go, some actualized and some not. Much of this may change, but I thought I’d share a little bit about where we’re thinking this next year might take us.

travel nursing

When it comes to travel nursing, it looks like we’ll be heading back east in March after Dan’s current contract in Phoenix ends. Dan has floated the idea of doing a contract along the way (or somewhat on the way at least), and recently we’ve both been feeling very reminiscent of our time in South Carolina. There are many factors of course, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we paid a visit to some friends in Myrtle Beach sometime soon. A visit at least, or perhaps we would do another contract there “on the way” back to New Hampshire.

Another option we’ve toyed with is having Dan work some local travel nursing contracts so we could be closer to family for a bit, but still stay in the game. Logistically that’s a bit more complicated if we wanted to keep receiving the living stiped tax free, but that’s not a be all & end all for us at this point. We will likely end up back in the New Hampshire area in the not so distant future, but the adventures won’t stop there, don’t worry 🙂

work, family, home

Dan is hoping to branch out into other areas of nursing/other specialties so being based in New Hampshire for a bit could help him achieve that. It seems to be pretty near impossible to get trained on a unit that you haven’t worked on before while travel nursing, so he may need to take a staff job to do that. In turn, that would open up a lot more doors for future travel nursing contracts which would be exciting. We’d both love the chance to spend some more time with family as well, and to create a bit more of a home base.

Honestly, we’re both itching to finally get our things out of storage. We’ve adjusted so much better than either of us expected when it comes to being as minimalistic as we’ve had to be, but I’ll just say it – we’re not minimalistic people. Travel nursing has helped us to be less attached to things, sure, but we still love our stuff. We appreciate the beauty of a cozy home with beautiful dishes, furniture, art, and knick knacks. Dan is most excited about setting up his desktop computer which he built from parts (it’s his baby). I am most excited to set up all of my wonderful kitchen things (wine glasses, Kitchenaid, blender, pots & pans, waffle iron – you name it). Also, our beautiful Scrabble board, I would LOVE to pull that out right about now.

travel

In terms of travel, we will obviously have another cross-country road trip coming up in just a couple of months. We’ll see, but I think we’re both feeling like it would be nice to take our time a bit more this time around. We made some fun stops on our way here, but all in all it was quite rushed and we really didn’t capitalize on the opportunity to see much of the places we stayed. Other than that, we will have to see where travel nursing takes us next on our way back east, whether we go straight to New Hampshire or do another contract along the way.

We’ve also had another trip…an international trip…floating in the back of our minds for the past year or so, but time will tell when we’re able to do it. More details to come on that whenever we figure it out!

goals

Like I said in my post about our New Year’s journal, we tend to shy away from New Year’s resolutions. We talk (and write down) our reflections from the past year and some general goals individually and together. It’s honestly more just a great opportunity for the two of us to come together to reflect, dream, and challenge each other. The things that we do decide to make “resolutions” of are things that we commit to together. Not necessarily that we do them together, but that we work to hold each other accountable to. I just thought I’d share a little snippet of this year’s here 🙂

We’re both hoping to read more this coming year and we always have fun brainstorming ideas of which books to read (of course many more come along as the year goes on). We’re actually trying something new to us, we started reading a book aloud together last night which I think will be a lot of fun. It may just have to be something we do all year! One of my Christmas presents was a beautiful new Bible that is organized as a daily reading plan to read the Bible in a year, so that is more of a resolution of mine. We have many more, but that’s all I’ll share for now!

what are you looking forward to most in 2023?