The Globe Squatters
Two artists, on a little adventure, house sitting their way around the world.
Wouldn’t it be cool to be the first people to house-sit their way around the world?
That was the first thought that popped into my head when we landed our first international house sit in Ireland. So we created The Globe Squatters, two artists on a little adventure, house-sitting their way around the world. And since this year is the 10th anniversary of when The Globe Squatters was born, I thought what better way to celebrate it than to share the experience! Why? House-sitting changed the way I traveled, and I think it might change the way I do, too. If you ever wanted to know how to start house-sitting and see it play out in real life, here it is!
A bit of back story… We were both working behind the scenes in movies and television and one fateful day, we were joking around about a phrase commonly used at work, “living the dream.” Then Patrick (sidekick) said something that would change our lives forever- “Yeah, living the dream, but whose?”
Whaaaatttt…(insert the needle on a record noise here).
It was then that we both realized that our dream of making art and traveling the world was taking a back seat. So, we downsized and began housesitting. And after we landed our first international house sit in 2013, The Globe Squatters was born.
We went to Ireland with the idea we would create our own reality web series about house sitting and started documenting everything. We edited all the footage together and started posting shorts. It somehow grew its’ own legs and turned into a 15-minute episode, which would become the pilot we would send to a reality production company.
Thinking nothing would probably happen, we continued with our web series. But then the company did, in fact, sign us for a year, and we had to remove everything we had posted!!! The year went by, and they produced very little results, so we went our separate ways.
However, during that year, we continued house-sitting around the world and documenting the experiences. By 2015, we had a bunch of footage and decided to shop around for another production company. But then life took a drastic turn…Patrick was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, and within five months, he had died. I lost my husband, my best friend, my travel buddy, and, most importantly, my creative collaborator in life. So that was awful.
And so began my Wandering Widow life.