Welcome to my blog titled ‘Five Things’ where you can expect just that - five random musings or reflections from the previous week or so. I’ll also share a quote I find meaningful as a point of focus for the week. For a photo gallery of our life on the road, our pets, and miscellaneous things I find interesting, you can follow me on Instagram @tabithalord.
So here are this week’s five things, starting with the quote of the week…
“Let our New Year's resolution be this: we will be there for one another as fellow members of humanity, in the finest sense of the word.” - Goran Persson
Instead of setting hard and fast goals for the New Year, I’m in the habit of setting intentions. If I know where I want to put my energy, and I’ve identified the things I want to work on both personally and professionally, individual, specific goals become clear. Personally, I’ve put a lot of work into my physical and emotional health over the last year, and going into 2026, I plan to lean into those good habits. Since Ray and I will be nomads no more in just a few weeks, I intend to put energy into building a local community. I’m not sure yet where I’ll find that community, but I’ll be engaging with things close to my heart, like pet rescues, book clubs, and writers’ groups. I’ll also be graduating in 2026, so much of my energy will still be focused on school. Finally, I’m planning on publishing a good bit of the new content I’ve written over the last two years, which is really exciting, so stay tuned.
After a relaxing vacation over the holidays, where I cooked, ate, played games with our family, and slept a ton, this week, I’m diving back into things. I’ve had my first meeting with my thesis mentor to talk about revisions, and I can’t wait to dive in. For me, editing is much less stressful than drafting. The story infrastructure is already there, so with edits, I’m refining and finessing vs. creating. I love thinking up new heroes and villains and plot action, but I really love making a good story better.
Today the painters got to work in our new place! While I am going to miss so many things about our adventures on the road, I’m looking forward to having a home base once again. There is a lot to do since we’re essentially starting from scratch, so I have to take things in small chunks. This weekend, we plan to shop for the bathrooms and then move on to the kitchen. If I think about everything that needs to be done, I’ll get totally overwhelmed, but when I use my tried and true methods of list-making, daily and weekly planning, and thinking incrementally, I can talk myself off the ledge!
As we wind up our time as nomads, people have been asking about our favorite places. Honestly, we’ve seen so many amazing things that it’s hard to pick, but for sure, the National Parks have been a highlight of our travels. None disappointed! I’d have to say the crown jewels were Yellowstone, the Tetons, and Glacier National, followed closely by Great Sand Dunes in Colorado and Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. We missed Yosemite. It was our plan to get there this summer if we were still on the road, but we’ll definitely be making a road trip there sometime in the near future!