Sometimes the right answer isn’t the best answer
We are nomadic now. Four words that carry a lot of meaning, both overtly and in ways you might never think about. After being “homeless” for over a year, some of those not-so-obvious things have come to light.
The first, most glaring and most oft encountered picadillo is the simplest question in the world: Where are you from?
If only it was that easy to answer. We aren’t houseless, we still own a home in the U. S., it is a vacation rental though and one of our sources of income. Although we absolutely adore being there when we can, we can’t really afford to be there for too long in any one year, and particularly not in the high summer season.
So, while it is where we most identify with a “home”, we can’t really say we are from Gulf Shores, Alabama.
Meanwhile, we spent nearly all our adult lives in the extended suburb area north of Seattle, Washington. Areas around Lynnwood, Everett, Mill Creek, Snohomish, Woodinville, Clearview etc. But we have absolutely no inclination to return there at all, aside to visit family when we can.
So, while that is where we spent most of our life, we aren’t going back when we get done traveling, so that doesn’t really meet most people’s definition of “where are you from?” either. It is where we used to be from.
Our address of record is Dallas, Texas. My sister and mom live there, and my sister has graciously volunteered some of her home and garage space to store our 10 or so odd boxes of remaining possessions and our car when we are off to distant places.
Dallas makes a great jumping off point for air travel, is in the middle of the country making a good start for driving adventures, and best of all has no state income tax.
So, while Dallas has plenty of advantages as a place to land, get our mail, and relax a little between journeys, we can’t really say we are from Dallas either.
Kind of an existential crises, eh? You don’t know where you are from? Next you will be telling me you don’t know who you are!
Well… there is a bit of that too. But that is a story for another time. 😉
In the beginning we tried to explain ALL of that to any unlucky soul who asked that question.
Let’s also keep in mind that in 97% of cases where you strike up any sort of conversation with someone you don’t know while traveling, that question will guaranteeably come up within the first 30 seconds or so. That is a lot of unlucky souls.
It was rough. We usually started with an eye roll and a prolonged, “Well… “. Then we launched into some sort of rapid-fire patter that left almost everyone with glazed over eyes and they always then picked a seat far away from us on the tour bus, or excused themselves to the restroom.
Initially we thought we just needed to get our schtick down to a more precise rhythm. We rehearsed all sorts of versions. We even tried eliminating the elongated “Well” and the eyeroll (although the eyeroll is reflexive sometimes). Nothing really helped.
Finally, we either wised up or became so exhausted trying to explain everything that we relented and managed to keep things to a simple, “We spent all our lives in Washington State, but we aren’t there anymore.”
For the purist, it doesn’t really answer the question fully. It leaves a lot of open issues. But we learned that some people don’t really give a rip where you are from and are only asking out of politeness, social pressure, or lack of anything better to do.
The rest of the people who do have at least a passing interest in your back story will usually ask more questions if they want more intel. Lots of people did ask and we parsed out the info in small more digestible pieces. That was way better than trying to do a whirlwind data dump.
We also learned that group settings like tours where the guide asks you to go around and introduce yourselves demand an even simpler answer. For those situations we conceded and simply said “Seattle”, adding in the Washington State and even America when we got blank stares in Europe.
Before we began a nomadic lifestyle this issue wasn’t even an issue. We wouldn’t have thought twice about simply saying, “Seattle” (with clarification given relative distance) and that would be that.
It is difficult to explain how baffling it is to not really be able to concisely answer the simplest question in the world. It is something that you won’t understand until you do what we did and hit the road to see the world.
But now though, while we may not know where we are from, we are always excited about where we are going!