Personal Stories Archives - KyleCaughtaCat

Let Striving Cease

I had a calendar alert go off yesterday: Create a South Africa Destination Guide If you’ve been following along with us for any period of time, you’ll know that we’ve been planning this leap into full time travel for a while. When I was prepping and doing research on “how to be a successful vlogger,” one of the biggest things I kept reading over and over again is “create a digital product.” Now, a digital product is not a foreign concept to me, I already have a few that I’ve made for my personal trainer business, but for travel? The only thing I could think to make was a “destination guide.” It wasn’t an idea that inspired me at the time, but I put it on my Trello board with a due date in March in the hopes that by the time it went off, I would be inspired. Spoiler Alert: I was not. Now don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of things we’ve done since being here that I would recommend in a heartbeat! But there are so many more things to experience here that we haven’t done, and won’t be able to do due to time, resources, etc. And there are vloggers who travel FULL TIME in South Africa—in no world would I be able to create something from one month here that would rival what they’ve created from living and traveling here exclusively. Before beginning this full-time-travel journey, both Kyle and I worked in professional theatre. And any performer will tell you that 95% of that job is auditioning. Like everything, there are trends in the theatre world: trends of vocal styles, trends of genre of shows that are being put on, trends in what “types” of performers are being cast… and often the temptation is to take each of those trends and constantly try to “mold” yourself to fit them. Over time, this lead me down a road of feeling like a mediocre version of other people more than an authentic version of myself. In my effort to create a diverse portfolio and become what (I believed) other people wanted, I lost what made me me. I was striving to be “successful” at the expense of what felt authentic/inspired, and it began to kill the joy of performing. So I changed that: nurtured the skillsets I did have and focused on thriving as my authentic self. What happened? The things that were meant for me gravitated towards me, and the things that weren’t fell away. But back to a “destination guide:” when I started to feel that sense of “striving” again this week, I paused; and I heard so clearly the words “let striving cease.” There’s nothing wrong with a digital product—I’ve created some myself and likely will do so again! But if I’m listening to my intuition on this, a “destination guide” is not what I want to create… not right now. It’s not inspired. To do so would be to strive… and I’ve been told to “let striving cease.” 😉 This whole chapter of our lives is a leap of faith. In the short term, it would be easier to walk the path of success that others have blazed before us with techniques that have been proven to work; but in the long term, I know it would lead to burnout. I don’t know how we’re going to monetize this lifestyle; I know how others have done it and I know what some of our options are, but I don’t actually know what will pan out… and I know what it feels like to try too hard to be something I’m not… Today we checked in to our hotel in the heart of Cape Town—it just happened to be right by the finish line for the Cape Town Cycle Tour. The energy was ELECTRIC. I’ve been running recreationally for most of my life and have had the honor of helping multiple people train for races as well. There is NOTHING like the feeling that comes with accomplishing something you didn’t think you were capable of. It expands your belief system in a way that is powerful and unmatched… and coaching people towards that is one of my greatest joys in life. Walking around the finish line tents this afternoon, my brain was running 100 miles an hour with inspiration. What if I could combine two of my favorite things—travel and coaching? What if we could host group trips around the world that are paired with events?? A bike race in Cape Town, South Africa. A half marathon under the Northern Lights. A triathlon through Italian wine country? I could write training programs and remotely coach people from all over the world and then host them with an awesome group trip that’s equal parts vacation and accomplishment? I’m not launching or announcing anything in this blog post by any means 😉 We’re still just trying to figure out the daily life of working/traveling/resting, and I’m trying hard not to rush through the significance of this beginning chapter. But the timing of today, it was really sweet. To host these kinds of trips and coach groups of people towards lofty goals, THAT would require no striving. That’s the kind of thing that inspires me, lights me up, keeps me awake at night with ideas. Part of the reason we began this whole journey was to follow our joy. Follow what felt “right” and break free from the sense of obligation that can sometimes creep into life. To “let striving cease” does not mean “stop working.” I think of it as the difference between riding a wave and trying to run alongside it. Today was a reminder that not every wave is ours, but the ones that are will come to us organically. Oh, and I dismissed that calendar alert 😉

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Flight Vouchers & Fate: Our Journey to South Africa

1 Comment / Personal Stories / Cat

5h, 21m That’s how much time is left in the flight according to the interactive globe map on the back of the seat in front of me. Kyle is in and out of sleep next to me. Either that, or he’s still in a NyQuil drugged state, but either way I’m grateful he’s resting. We had a little “sick” scare a couple days ago when he woke up feeling gross with a low-grade fever, but (thankfully) had the option to push our flight back a day thanks to a snow storm. Decided we’d wait and make the call day-of, but he woke up feeling better with no fever this morning, so we carried on as usual… Neither of us tend to sleep well on planes, but I’d venture to say he does better of the two of us. I only have so much patience for tying myself into knots trying to get comfortable before it’s not worth it and I’d rather just watch “Singing in the Rain” through delightfully mediocre airplane earbuds (I’m not being sarcastic. I kinda love the silly little earbuds. They’re part of the ✨experience✨). And honestly, the lack of sleep does make it easier to go to bed at a normal bedtime hour in the new place, which helps with adjusting to the time zone. #jetlaghacks Time itself feels pretend right now. Our plane windows are ones that you change the “tint” on instead of pulling a shade down, so everything is colored a kind of dark hazy blue. It’s 4:30am on the east coast of the US, but 11:30am in Cape Town. We’re somewhere in the middle right now off the west coast of Africa and, thanks to the jetlag prep I do, my body doesn’t really feel like it’s either—just in some nebulous blob of wibbly wobbly timey-wimey stuff. #iykyk I didn’t intend on writing this on the plane. I planned on writing a “packing list” blog sometime after filming the packing vlog for YouTube this weekend; but when I pulled out my computer to work on my muggle jobs, I saw that we’d lost wifi and opted to record a little “personal story” blog instead. I realized that we’ll only be on this starting-full-time-travel-for-real flight once, and these are the kinds of moments I’ll want to go back and reread one day: Where were we emotionally/mentally on the day we left for Cape Town? We’ve been asked some variation of this question repeatedly over the last month, it’s a very fair one considering how far we’ve come to get to this point. In short, I don’t feel at all like I anticipated I would. No nervousness, not even the weight of our reality. It’s more of a settled and grounded sense of peace. It feels almost casual, normal. We’ve been waiting for it for so long, it’s almost a sense of relief to finally be stepping into it. The hardest part of this whole thing was still that drive away from Branson; away from our kitty and friends and house… and each goodbye since has been a little bit easier. I think it’s because Branson was our life: it’s where we built our marriage, our home, our skills, our little family, our lives… and all the other goodbyes were of people and places we love but haven’t lived among for nearly 10 years. Visiting friends and family still means staying in guest rooms, so it’s almost like we’ve spent the last month wading into the waters of “nomadic travel,” and this final flight is just the natural progression of that. Not to mention, we’ll also be staying with friends for our first week in SA, so in a way, it feels like a continuation of the last 4 weeks. But we weren’t always going to start here…one year ago, we came to the sad conclusion that the price point to fly to Cape Town (about $1,200 per person) just wasn’t feasible. We’d initially wanted to start here because of the weather (it’s summer), family friends, and it’s English speaking. So it was disappointing to be honest with ourselves about money and start pivoting our plans. About a week after this, we volunteered to be bumped from our flight home after visiting Kyle’s family. We had the time to push our trip a day or two and figured it wouldn’t hurt to have some voucher money in our back pocket. I’d volunteered to be bumped for $500/person when we checked in on the app—so I just figured I’d get a text being like “hey, we bumped you, here’s your voucher and new flight ticket for tomorrow.” Fun fact: even if you volunteer to be bumped via the app, they still need you to show up at the counter and confirm in person. Since I thought we’d just get a text from them, we walked a few gates down to get coffee and waited. When we got the “your flight is boarding” text, we shrugged our shoulders and started walking back to our gate and just figured they didn’t need us to volunteer anymore. We were wrong. When we got to our gate, we heard “we are now offering a $2,000 flight voucher for anyone who is willing to fly to Springfield tomorrow! We cannot leave Richmond until we have two more volunteers agree to change their flight.” Y’all I wish you could have seen the SPEED with which we ran to the counter. And that’s the story of how we got TWO $2,000 United Airlines flight vouchers. A total of $4,000 in flight credit with United. One week after we’d realized that Cape Town was going to be beyond our price point. So we took that as a sign: we were meant to start in Cape Town, SA. We held on to those vouchers for 8 months and in September, sat down and filmed ourselves as we booked two seats on a flight from Washington DC to Cape Town, SA on United Airlines:

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The Hardest Part of Leaving…

Personal Stories / Cat

If anything had a chance of stopping us from traveling, it’s this girl right here. This is a tender subject among people—and it should be. What happens to your pets when you leave? It was never on the table that we’d give her up—we committed to being her parents from the moment we spent $35 to bring her home from the Humane Society in February of 2021. When we first started entertaining the idea of full-time travel, it was with the thought that Luna would travel with us. She’s harness trained, does great in the car, and has gone on a fair few mini-adventures with us with reasonable success. But as we took the time to really consider the reality of full-time travel (particularly international workaway travel like we’ll be doing) it just seemed more and more likely that we’d be asking too much of her. We couldn’t ask her to tolerate public transportation or risk losing her at a farmstay… we would not be able to control the stressors she’d be exposed to and it wasn’t going to be fair. The kind of travel we’re going to be doing isn’t glamourous: we’re gonna be working, potentially sleeping outside… There might be other animals or bugs and we have no idea what border crossings are like with a pet. Vanlife with Luna would be one thing: she’d be in a contained and familiar space with her parents constantly present. But international budget travel… it just isn’t worth the risk. But man, is it one of the most heartbreaking things we’ve ever done, leaving her behind. Allow me to introduce you to CJ. CJ and I met in 2017 in a production of Hairspray in Greenville, SC. We kindled a friendship that has stood the test of time, multiple moves, and a pandemic. In the summer of 2021, CJ was hired at Sight and Sound and moved into the Mother-in-Law suite of our house downstairs. She shortly thereafter graduated from “friend” to “family” and became Luna’s defacto godmother; watching her for us whenever necessary and often looking forward to the opportunities to do so. At first, the thought was that my parents would take Luna while we were gone. But they had an elderly cat and aspirations for eventual long-term travel themselves… So the choice was pretty clear: Luna should stay with her aunt CJ. She’d be safe with a familiar person and well loved in a place she already knew. And as much as it was devastating to say goodbye to Luna this week, there wasn’t any fear. Knowing as we drove away that she wouldn’t only be cared for, but loved, happy—that was a balm that eased the grief in such a way that we knew we’d made the right decision. The right decisions can still be really hard, but Luna deserves a cozy home while her parents are away with a godmother who will love and care for her as much as we did ourselves. The goal is still to take her back. As soon as we can travel with her in such a way that we know she’ll be safe and comfy, we will. But in the meantime, we’ll treasure every Marco Polo and photo CJ sends us on the daily. Our sweet Luna McGonagall Valentine Blanchard <3

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No Turning Back Now

2 Comments / Personal Stories / Cat

What a blessing it is to have been a part of something that makes saying goodbye so hard. I’m writing this now on the mattress on the floor of our bedroom—the only place to sit in our house now that is a slight upgrade from sitting on the floor itself. I’m fighting off just a hint of a cold that’s been threatening over the last week. A mild headache which was no doubt exacerbated by the many many tears shed last night in the arms of friends who have changed our lives forever. I don’t like to cry. I don’t like to be vulnerable in front of people. I like to be the one doing the comforting and the fixing and I generally hide when I feel emotions coming on. Yesterday I WEPT and knew what it was to be held in grief. Oh, the gratitude. Yesterday was hard. It was beautiful and full and significant—but it was really hard. Waves of grief would hit throughout the day, alternating with waves of self-inflicted disassociation (in order to do my literal job, lol) Some waves being mere seconds apart from each other. It’s always hard to say goodbye to a show—but we were here for almost 6 years. This wasn’t just a show. This was our community. Our family. This was the life that filled our days for years. The opportunity to work in collaboration with people to create beautiful art—it binds you together forever. And knowing that most of them will continue on to create new art—art I will not know or be involved in—it’s a bizarre and foreign thought. There’s no jealousy by any means. I have no regrets and am fully confident that we’re walking the path we’re supposed to—but it’s definitely strange. Yesterday I turned in my parking pass and badge to the building. I don’t work at Sight and Sound anymore. I don’t have a dressing station, or a “track,” or costumes, or wigs, or access to the building. Yesterday I walked out the wrong door by mistake and turned around to re-enter—only to realize that the back of my phone (which has held my badge for years) wasn’t going to provide that all-too-familiar “beep,” admitting me back in the way I came. I walked around the building to my car. It wasn’t sad so much as potent. I expect to feel more and more over the coming weeks. I think my brain is micro-dosing the processing as to not incapacitate me from actually getting the work done that we’ve committed to this week. We leave in a week and have a series of loose ends to tie up between then and now. Yesterday was the necessary end that needed to precede this new beginning. When I was a little girl, my parents wanted me to stop using pacifiers (what I affectionately called “bobbies”) Mom had me collect all my 8 pacifiers in a little bag, took me to Toys-R-Us to pick out a Barbie, pre-paid for it with the cashier, and prepped her to ask for “8 bobbies” in exchange for my new barbie. Essentially turning my pacifiers into a form of currency. Despite working towards this for two years, the idea of being full-time travelers has felt like an idea or a concept more than a reality—until this morning. I got used to our routine. Our gym. Our community. Our jobs. Our cars. Our furniture. Our kitty. Our house. Our people. Our comforts. Our “bobbies.” Bit by bit, all those things that were “ours” are going away. Like God took us to Toys-R-Us and invited us to choose our new adventure—but we have to exchange our bobbies. These comforts have served us well over the last 6 years, but we can’t have both. And as hard as it is to turn in all these beautiful comforts, I stand by the decision if it means we get to “buy” a brand new adventure from God’s toy store. It’s not all been an immediate exchange, but yesterday was certainly a very big one. We had a huge 2-day estate sale a few weeks ago. We sold Kyle’s Jeep on Monday. Our furniture was all picked up for donation yesterday. I voluntarily said a final goodbye to my performance job and many friends last night. We have a video interview in an hour to work at a farm in Portugal in March. I turn 31 tomorrow. We get my final paycheck on Friday. We have a little goodbye party in our empty MIL suite on Saturday. I sell my car next Monday. We say goodbye to Luna and our home next week. We’ll drive to visit family for a few weeks and then leave for South Africa at the beginning of February. I’m really grateful we have eachother, Kyle and I. This would be a lot harder alone and I commend the many travelers that do it. I can’t think of any nicely poetic way to end this post and I’m too emotionally exhausted to brainstorm one that would make any sense, if I’m honest. Thank you for coming along with us on this adventure, friends. We’re so grateful for you. And despite the general melancholy tone of this post, we really are so excited and grateful. Happy New Year. <3 -Cat

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Why the Name “KyleCaughtaCat?”

Personal Stories / Cat

In short, it was our wedding hashtag. We got married in November of 2020, and while that (obviously) came with it’s fair share of…challenges…one of the real blessings was time. When I (Cat) was 15 years old and making the cringiest Pinterest wedding board of all time—I did not consider one highly crucial element to DIY weddings: time. Adults with jobs just don’t have the amount of time to plan a wedding that my idealizing 15 y/o self believed they did. Unless, of course, you get engaged on March 8th, 2020—then you do, in fact, have all that time and more. And while I would not say we had a DIY wedding, we did spend most of our quarantine crafting wedding centerpieces, wedding favor candles, and going on runs outside when the cabin fever got too intense. I digress… The hashtag was born on one of these runs—I know the exact place on the road—just past the Butterfly Palace here in Branson. A place I probably wouldn’t dare run now, but in the COVID world of such little traffic, made for a charming road-run with a view. We’d been brainstorming and throwing out any and every ridiculous combination of our names we could come up with before Kyle said “KyleCaughtaCat” and we laughed so hard that we simply had to commit to it. We created an email account using that hashtag shortly thereafter in order for us both to have access to wedding emails without it clogging up our personal inboxes. And 2 years ago when we decided to pursue full-time travel, we started using that same shared email for any courses or subscriptions related to travel for the same reason. Over time, our kylecaughtacat email transitioned into the shared email for our travel vlog. I don’t actually remember if there was a set time that we decided to be “KyleCaughtaCat.” To the best of my memory, it was just kinda assumed: like obviously that’s our travel channel. It’s almost like it was just the natural next chapter of a silly but delightful little hashtag. It’s silly, creative, and maybe a little confusing. Seems fitting. 😉 -Cat & Kyle

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