At the time, we were both working in film. Exhausting schedules and long hours ruled our daily lives to the point we barely saw each other. And even when we did, we were too tired to do anything other than laundry and sleep.
One day, I came across an article about house sitting. When my husband, Patrick, came home that night I made a joke about us “living the dream”.
And Patrick said: Yeah… but whose?
That question impacted me. Especially since I had accidentally landed in the world of being a scenic artist with no formal training. I was living a dream, kind of. I mean it wasn’t my dream originally because I didn’t know it existed but it became my dream.
But just because I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life and this came along didn’t actually mean I was living any dream. My real dream, my original dream, was to be an artist in my own right. Scenic art was a route to that dream but it wasn’t the end. For Patrick, his dream was to be an artist too.
The truth was— we weren’t living ours.
I told him about the article I read on house sitting. I came up with a name and placed us on a few house sitting sites as: The Globe Squatters- Two artists, on a little adventure, house sitting their way around the world.
Our first international house sit was in Ireland. We thought we were getting a quiet place on the North Atlantic. What we got was 18 chickens, 14 ducks, a dog and cat they never mentioned on their profile.
And a completely different way of living.
The best thing about house sitting was we weren’t viewed as tourists. We were inside people’s lives and real homes. In their routines, their worlds. We became instant locals because of this. Even though we knew nothing about where we were.
It was one small idea that led into a lifestyle, a story, bodies of work and a life that felt as real as we were. Nothing like the fake realities we were once building.
Then everything changed.
This is where you choose your own adventure.
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Next stop: Panic Quietly.
You don’t need a map. Three roads. No wrong one.
Just choose your direction.