This post is one of the hopefully inspiring ones. I want to use my experience of absolute sheer joy, contendedness, and a snippit of living my best life to encourage people to follow their own version. Specifically, I want to inspire readers to follow the little dreams. This is not a post about the biggest, most important, exciting, wonderful thing I've ever done. This isn't a story of reckless abandon and a transformative new life. It's a story about a weekend. One that was dreamt up, thought about, planned (to an extent), and then executed. Simple as that. But the result, for me, has been a pure appreciation of life, and total and complete peace. It's little, but yet, so big. And I hope that you can find a way to translate that into your own life and do a little thing to follow your own little dream.
I decided a while back, that I wanted to eventually move back to Florida. I had lived in the panhandle - in Panama City Beach - for far too short of a time. Just a few months in, we were hit by Hurricane Michael and half the region was shut down for months; people lost some or everything. It was a very humbling experience to see both the genuine good of people and the absolute worst. I was sad that, just as it felt like we were finally rebuilding, my company decided to close that location and we had to lay off everybody that had moved there for the job and had invested so much into building the best organization I've ever had the privilege to take part in. I was absolutely devastated, and heartbroken, and it's one of the worst parts of my life that followed one of the best things in my career, which was setting up that site in the first place. Nevertheless, the panhandle wasn't really the right part of Florida for me. I always make the best of everything, but it felt more like Alabama South rather than the relaxing cultural retreat in which I'd see myself retire.
Since then I've done a lot of thinking about where I might want to end up and where I would want to retire. Living in Texas as affirmed that Texas is definitely it. I didn't realize how much I'd dislike it years ago when I thought about moving to Dallas for work to escape Connecticut, but now I know and it is what it is. The good thing about living in Fort Worth is that I still make a decent California salary but the cost of living is significantly lower, so I don't spend a lot of money. Thus, I have some money to invest, and to save, and to spend on vacations and fun stuff. So that's exactly what I'm doing. I've decided that the best way to get through the misery of living in Texas is to spend as much time as I can away from it. So if Texas isn't my forever home, then where? Living abroad intrigues me - Japan, Australia, Italy, Denmark, Costa Rica maybe. But there are also lots of challenges with leaving the US. And I just keep coming back to Florida. I love the ocean, I love the idea of being able to see launches into space, I enjoy the theme parks, and it's more achievable and financially feasible than living on the beach in California or Hawaii.
So I've been eyeing properties in Florida. Mostly empty vacant land that's buildable, with the hopes that someday I could invest and hold on to that land. And then, when I am getting closer to either moving there or retiring, I could build my dream house on that property. One of the things that's tough about buying land is that looking at it on the website really doesn't give you much context. The land listing's pictures can seem redundant; you're looking at the same wooded areas over and over. One can map out the distance to common establishments like Target or Taco Bell to get a feel for how remote a property is, or to the nearest beach. But that just becomes a distance, a number, and trying to develop a formula to tell you whether it's worth it or not has proven fruitless for me. Even with Google Street view, it's hard to get the vibe of a place. So I decided to pick a weekend and fly out to Florida, base myself in the Orlando area and just go explore and see what I could see. I wasn't necessarily looking to actually buy property while in Florida; I primarily wanted to scope out all the different areas so that I have a better feel for what I'm looking at when I'm looking at property online.
Being a savvy traveler, and also a frequent traveler, I was able to book my hotel with points and chose the cheapest one because proximity to a specific attraction or theme park wasn't relevant to me like it would be for other visitors. The original weekend that I had booked ended up having some really bad weather, so about 2 hours before I would have to pay a cancellation fee, I made the decision to push out my travel to a later weekend. It just so happened that that was Memorial Day weekend which allowed me to extend my stay by a day.
For my land search, I was primarily concerned with four areas of Florida. I wanted to check out the St. Augustine area which is a little bit further north and on the East Coast. I wanted to look in Orlando, even though it's explicitly not near the beach, primarily because I've noticed that the housing prices are a little bit more affordable in Orlando, and the draw to the attractions could make it a good investment. And I wanted to look on the east and west coasts approximately lateral with Orlando - the Tampa/ Clearwater/ Pinellas area as well as the Space Coast and Melbourne / Cocoa Beach areas.
I rented a Jeep in case I needed to do some offroading, and each day I headed in a different direction. In hindsight, it was a pretty clever plan, but it was less intentionally thought through and more like the plan developed as I started to realize the enormity of what I was trying to accomplish. I landed Thursday night and basically did nothing but get to my hotel and settle in. When I checked in to the hotel, I was informed that I'd have a food credit for $25 for each night I stayed. I found parking near my building and got to my room with no problem. One thing that, no matter how many trips I take, I manage to miss almost half of the time, is packing a hair brush. I have 37 small brushes at home from having to buy them while traveling, yet I still manage to pack a bag without a brush roughly every second or third trip. Thankfully, my hair is fairly easy to deal with, especially when its short but even when it's the length it is now - longer than I prefer but not long enough to donate.
So Friday morning I had to struggle with running my fingers through my hair and putting my hair up without a brush. That would be the first of a handful of silly missteps, but, hey, gotta keep things interesting, right? Then I grabbed a bagel from the hotel pantry and headed north towards St. Augustine. It would be the furthest area so I was glad to get it out of the way early in the trip. I checked out the area a little bit, just driving around, and observing. It seemed a little like Panama City Beach, but somehow a little less redneck riviera and more intellectual, somehow.
Needing to use a restroom, I directed myself to a Publix near the beach. After taking care of the first priority, I shopped around a bit and came across a cooler bag that can be flattened which is super helpful for travel since it's not a big bulky ice chest but it will hold food cold - claiming it can keep even frozen things for up to 3 hours. Trying to stay a little on the healthy side, I got a bag of baby carrots and a couple drinks - and a hairbrush.
The Publix parking lot was marked for Publix parking online, forbidding people to park for the beach there, but since I had actually shopped at Publix, I figured it would be ok for me to take a quick walk to the beach before departing. The sun was shining and the walk was lovely. I passed by a themed motel that I enjoyed. Closer to the beach, I noted the changing rooms, public restrooms, and those standalone
showers and foot washes. I left my flipflops at the end of the walkway and sauntered into the sand. I noted that the beach actually allowed for four wheel vehicles to enter and park along the back of the sandy part, for a small fee. That seems incredibly convenient, I thought. I had my bathing suit in my car but since I was wearing shorts, I went into the water up to my knees and took in the view of the ocean for the first time on this trip. Yep, I love the water here. I walked back to my car at the Publix parking lot and debated changing into my swimsuit and going for a swim, but I reminded myself that this was going to be a long driving day and that I should really see a property or two before I goof off. So, I set my destination for the nearest property to where I was. And brushed my hair with my newly acquired hair brush on the way.
Now I got really lucky, and I absolutely fell in love with the first piece of property I saw. And that's not to say that I would fall in love with any piece of property, I've looked for land before and it took me a little while to find the property that I wanted. In this case though, I felt very confident that this was a great piece of land that I wanted. It was advertised as a corner lot which didn't really sink in until I experienced it - across the street in two directions were undevelopable land, so it was both extremely private and yet incredibly easy to access. It was a dirt road, but flat and even enough that even a car with low clearance could get through it. I also liked the proximity to St. Augustine. It was only about 20, maybe 25 minutes out of the main part of the town.
The neighbors seemed okay enough. They had basic but decent houses and yards that weren't completely trashed, which can be a rarity when you're looking at these other properties. Sometimes the streets have just absolute junkyards in front yards of the various homes along the street. I also liked that, on some of the streets to the property, you have almost a tree canopy going over the street, which to me is just very romantic. I don't know what I love about that so much but it just it takes my breath away when I see that kind of thing, and so to have 
that be part of my daily drive would be just absolutely amazing.As far as the property itself, there wasn't much to do or see, except to note that it was extremely densely forested. It would need to be cleared even to camp in realistically, let alone set up an RV or manufactured home on it. But even the dense woods were strikingly beautiful. It wasn't a beachside oasis, to be sure, but so close to the beach and to a great city seems like a fair compromise for the price of the property.
I drove to three or four other properties up there, and I was thankful then for my rented Jeep because those roads were far less friendly to low clearance vehicles. I was really off-roading! And let me tell you, it was much more rocking and turning and ups and downs then a typical Disney ride! Some other properties just felt too unpassable even to get to but I got an idea and I really just wasn't as enthralled with any of them or the surrounding areas like I was that first piece of land. I reminded myself that the purpose of this trip was to explore and have a better understanding of the potential investments, but it seemed like every property I saw after the first one just reconfirmed why that first property was so good.
Since Friday was a lot of driving, I got back to the hotel and had dinner at the hotel pool bar and then called it a night. Saturday would be a little bit more interesting with not only the opportunity to go see multiple open houses, but there was also a SpaceX launch and a swing dance in Orlando that night.
Since I had some time in the morning, I decided to use today's food credit to check out the hotel's breakfast buffet. It wasn't much, and definitely not worth the price, so I got what I wanted and headed out, stopping at the pantry to load my new cooler bag up with some drinks and a bagel for later.
I headed east and checked out a couple places in the Space Coast area, making sure that I was in a good position to see the SpaceX launch when it happened. I was about 20 miles as the bird flies, by my estimation, from the launchpad, and it was a very bright day, so I could easily see the flame of the rocket but it was hard to make out the actual rocket. I could see the flame seem to turn as it crossed into the outer atmosphere. I watched the landing on the livestream on my phone. It was a good experiment because if I bought property in this area, I would know what to expect as far as visibility to the launches - and further away would then be less visibility. 
As I drove south along the ocean side, I found a public beach and decided you know what, I didn't get to swim in the water in St. Augustine, today may be the day I go for a swim. So I found a place where I could park for just a couple bucks, and a changing room, and I threw my swimsuit on and I went out and just soaked in the ocean and bobbed in the waves exactly like I love to do. At that point I didn't really have much of a schedule except for Swing Dad's later that night. So it didn't really matter how long I stayed and I wasn't really stressed out about anything which is really a wonderful way of spending a Saturday afternoon. But, as happens in Florida sometimes, a cloud turned dark in the distance, and I recognized the distinct possibility it'd be raining and lightning soon. I got to my car just as my parking expired and just as the storm rolled in. Driving through the rain, I went to go see a couple more properties and then I headed back to my hotel. I had a little bit of downtime and then showered and got ready for the swing dance. I hit my second little snafu when I got to the dance - pulling out what I thought were my dance shoes. The bag I had packed and brought with me, for some reason, had two left shoes in there. One was a dance shoe and one was a regular walking/running shoe. I thought for a moment, how could I possibly put both of these on, one on the wrong foot, and make it still work? Because I was currently wearing flip flops and that wasn't going to be a great dance experience. But then I remembered that I also had walking shoes in the car just in case I wanted to get out and walk the properties. So I ran out and got those, and at least there was a left and a right shoe. And luckily, they were not super sticky on the floor, so I could still dance sufficiently. And they weren't flip-flops.
I had a great time dancing. It's always a little awkward being a newbie because the regulars aren't sure my skill level or even if I'm friendly. But being alone helps with the latter, I think, because they know I'm not there "with" someone at least. Maybe it would be better to be with a dance partner who could show me off. But it didn't take long for someone to ask me to dance, and after a few more dances I was able to do some excellent Lindy swing outs and tricky Charleston follows. I even thought I recognized somebody from Camp Hollywood, and when he asked me to dance, I confirmed that to be the case. Between dances, I socialized with the newbies sitting on either side of me, who were just learning, and they complimented my dancing. When I danced with the lesson's teacher, I inquired if the Shim Sham was a regular thing, and she said it can definitely be requested. As is common at these socials, they took a break to do announcements, then invited me for an out-of-towner dance in which everyone not dancing stands in a circle and the leads continually "steal" me from my partner. After that, they put on the Shim Sham and I was happy to partake in that at my request. All day Saturday, even though I was looking at different properties and doing other fun activities, I couldn't help but continue thinking about that property I'd seen Friday - the first one I had looked at. I decided to do a little bit more due diligence on both the company I'd be buying it from as well as the actual property and the county zoning and all of that. So Sunday morning, I let myself sleep in and then went to the hot tub before I showered. I had the hot tub to myself, which filled me with joy and let me focus on the task at hand. I finished doing my research on the company and on the county zoning, and decided everything checked out. With no other doubts I could think of or decision points I needed to
wrestle with, I went ahead and purchased the property. Woohoo! I am now under contract for a little less than an acre 20 minutes outside of St. Augustine and I couldn't be more excited! I tried getting under the waterfall in the hot tub, which turned out to be an extraordinary massage with the heated water hitting my neck and back with the perfect amount of force. When the hot tub became a little too hot in the rapidly rising Florida heat, I hopped over to the pool which I also had to myself. I caught up on texts with friends and family before deciding to head in and get ready to go for the day. Even though I had now committed to a property, I still wanted to finish my full exploration. 
After I finally got my butt through the shower and ready, I decided to check out the nearby Disney Celebration neighborhood before heading west. This has been a neighborhood on my radar for years, for some reason I thought all the houses there were exorbitantly expensive. But actually, I looked on Zillow and there were houses that were in reasonable price ranges and even some that were relatively cheap compared to what I'm used to in Texas. There were the multi-million dollar houses also, and I kind of wanted to see what that looked like. There were a few houses that had open houses on Sunday so I decided to at least look at them, although not necessarily go in for the open house. I had originally considered attending open houses but realized that just comes with a lot of unnecessary explaining and sales pressure, and I wasn't all that concerned with the interiors at this point anyways. Until I'm actually ready to move, I'd stick to more of just the driveby's to have a feel for the areas I could potentially consider in the future. So that's what I did. I went over to the Celebration neighborhood which was coincidentally really close to my hotel. After I saw the first house, I took a little detour on my way to the second house. I saw a little boardwalk that went into a forested area and I thought that was pretty cool looking. I parked and got out to walk it a little bit. That brought me quickly to a little pond which was very scenic and filled with wildlife - fish jumping and making ripples, and a woodpecker in the tree by the walkway. There were several people walking and running and even biking as I was walking along and so it just seemed like a really vibrant, healthy way to get a workout in and be among nature, which is really cool. I walked a little bit further, but it just seemed like it was a really nice path and I could picture myself actually living in that neighborhood and running on that boardwalk.
There was one street on which I really enjoyed all the houses, they were all different styles and all very big. And you know, multi-million dollar, beautiful mini mansions. But I just loved all the different styles. I liked how a lot of them had a kind of archway that you would drive through to get to the garage in the 
back, so that takes the garage away from being the front and center part of your house. A highlight for me was, of course, the traditional and modern takes on turrets, which I just love. You know I love my turrets! I took a lot of pictures on that street, and I mean, if that isn't the dream right there I don't know what is.
I was completely struck by how the whole area felt very Disney themed without having explicit Mickey Mouses everywhere. It's kind of hard to put my finger on it, exactly, but the architecture and the motif, the art deco perhaps, it all just felt like Main Street Disneyland and a little bit like Hollywood Studios, again without being super explicit with theming. Just having that little touch, that little nuance, little textures, all the buildings had little flares of whimsy and clean old-timey throwbacks, 
and it was just so, so put together. I could really see how if you want to live in Florida and you have some money, why you would want to live in Celebration. It just feels like the perfect Utopian neighborhood. I was struck by the 7-Eleven as I exited the neighborhood. It was also done up like that, and I just I couldn't help myself. I needed to get gas anyways, so I stopped there to get gas and I went into the store to get some snacks. And of course they were selling Disney items and Mickey ears and all of that.
Finally, I headed west and went to the Clearwater/Tampa/Pinellas area. The traffic was much worse going this way and I'm not sure that I would like that permanently. I also didn't love the vibe there. It felt almost like Texas. I did get a chance to scope out the beach. To do so, I parked in a permit only lot, but I figured I'd only be there for a few minutes. I walked down and just got my feet in the water for a few minutes. I do love the warm, clear water of the Gulf. I remember it from living in Panama City Beach, and I could 
instantly recognize the appeal of the place, even if the establishments and traffic are less desirable. It's just absolutely amazing - there's nothing like it! After a few minutes on the beach, with my feet in the water, taking a couple selfies, I headed back up to my forbidden parking lot. I love how every beach I've been to seems to have a full shower and a foot wash right there as you exit. It's amazing, such a little thing and yet so helpful. I washed my feet off real quick and popped back into my Jeep to get back on the road.
What I've really liked about this trip is that I have a rough schedule - a rough aim, a destination of where I want to go, and approximately when - but other than that, I'm by myself and I'm doing whatever I want to do. I'm listening to audiobooks. I'm doing a lot of deep thinking and planning for the future, and I'm listening to music when I don't feel like I have the brain power to do anything else. I'm belting my own karaoke performances at the top of my lungs. So all this driving around isn't just wasted time. I'm actually working on stuff mentally. I'm learning. I'm thinking big picture ideas. I'm planning for the future and I'm enjoying myself. When I have to use the restroom, I stop at gas stations or fast food chains and I don't really stop to eat for very long. Although, I thought about giving myself a break from driving and sitting down to eat somewhere, but I just keep going because it's so much fun to just be on the move and check out the different areas.
My Publix cold pack bag has been very handy - I've put cold stuff in there in the morning, including my carrots which I am still trying to force myself to eat in between meals instead of the other options for snacks. I can fill it with new drinks and stuff that I'm buying at the gas stations to keep me fueled and hydrated. I stop when I want to stop and I keep going when I want to keep going and it's just been really liberating. I feel like I don't have any responsibilities. Everything is taken care of or can be taken care of with a swipe of a credit card. I'm not really spending that much money while I'm here, just gas and a handful of snacks or quick meals. The food at the hotel is free for me so stocking up there means I don't need to purchase a lot while I'm on the road. And since the hotel was free, the biggest expense really was my plane ticket. And of course, I did splurge for first class because I'm a brat like that.
I hit another storm on my way home from the west coast, but safely made it back to my hotel. The storm deterred my interest in going out somewhere fun for dinner, which was fine. I was glad that I had already toured around the Celebration neighborhood when it had still been sunny. I grabbed some food to make into dinner from the hotel pantry and basically collapsed into my bed. I finished three audio books on this trip - one which had previously been started and one which was a re-read, but still. I played on my phone, posted pictures, caught up on texts with Sam and Ryan and Darc, and then passed out.
What I want readers to get out of this is the idea that if there's something that you want to do, it doesn't have to be the traditional vacation. I'm here in Florida and a lot of people might think that I'm crazy for not just staying at the beach all day, or not going to one of the theme parks even though I proclaim that I love them. There's lots of events and things to do here, but that's not the focus that I wanted on this trip. And I think that's okay, I'm enjoying what I'm doing. Hell, it's more than okay. I'm learning. I'm getting me time - and that's something that's pretty hard for me to do typically. I usually hate driving, especially long distances or in traffic, but I'm making the most of it and it doesn't stress me out because I don't have a strict schedule. And I have an overwhelming sense that life is good.
So if you have something that you want to do, even if it seems silly or other people don't understand it, I want you to know that you can. You can make the plan. You can save up the money. You can go and do whatever that thing is. It doesn't have to be what normal people would do in a certain area and it doesn't have to be super expensive. I feel like I'm living my best life, even though I'm pretty much going from gas station to gas station. Even though I hate driving, I'm making the drive work in my favor - forcing focus and creation and decompression. If I can enjoy driving this much, then certainly you can find what makes you happy that is or is not aligned with the "norm." And follow your gut - if you make a plan and you decide you don't want to do that thing anymore, do what you think is going to make you happiest.
Follow my lead, and do your own version of my Florida Dreamin'!
