Hello!

Well hello!  Thanks so much for stopping by!  
Are you like me and sometimes have a conversation with someone about one thing, and during the course of that conversation the other person says something that doesn’t resonate with you in the moment, but then several hours later you have a light-bulb moment?  Well that recently happened to me, due to a conversation I had several hours ago with my sister.
I don’t know if you’ve ever heard two middle-aged women discussing something, but it often starts with one topic and then branches out into several topics….what caused my epiphany was my sister asking me: “what are you waiting for?”
Let me back up….
My name is Elizabeth and I’m a Senior Travel Consultant, with over 30 years of experience in the travel business.
Due to COVID, and the subsequent temporary halt in travel, I took lay off in April of 2020.  
Having worked for more than half my life in a very stressful business (yes my friends, working in travel IS stressful.  No, it’s not brain surgery, but when you have clients who are handing over thousands of dollars to you and depending on you to make their travel dreams a reality, the pressure’s on)…..
Anyway, having worked for more than half my lifetime in a very stressful business, to then suddenly have 24 hours a day to NOT work was jarring.  At first, I didn’t know what to do with myself.
But after sleeping in for a few days, I realised I had been given a great gift…..the gift of time.  I now had TIME to do whatever I wanted.  So I asked myself, “what do you WANT to do?”  And the answer was, “I want to create”.
In December 2018 I had reconnected with my artistic side, creating abstract wall art (acrylic pours were how I got started), but that was “in my free time”, of which I had little, because I was working 12-15 hours a day up to that point.
So now, having been given the gift of time, I could create more wall art….which led into creating wearable art…and then working with resin (and now, more recently, jewellery-making).  
Having time to create was (and still is) wonderful.  It’s what has kept me mentally stable during what was, in my lifetime, the most stressful year for most of the planet (2020 that is), but it wasn’t putting food on the table.
In the meantime, in May 2020, my sister bought an RV…a big one….and we (my sister, her two kids, me, and all our dogs) would go on road-trips.  It was the safest way to travel locally as, due to social distancing, we didn’t want to use public facilities to eat, go to the washroom, and sleep.
On one of those trips, as I had my hands in a collapsible bucket filled with warm water and dish soap, washing dishes in the sunshine on a picnic table, a thought came into my mind:  “I wish I could wash dishes outside at home” (my home at the time was a two-bedroom apartment on the second floor of a century house).
This thought, combined with the Youtube videos I’d been watching on #vanlife, combined to form the conclusion that I wanted to join the vanlife community.  
Vanlife just makes sense for me, at this point in my life.  My adult daughter lives in British Columbia (I’m currently in Ontario), my job is temporarily on hold, I have no mortgage or ties to property here, I have no spouse who’s tying me to a location due to his job, I have itchy feet and don’t feel like myself unless I’m travelling…so why stay in one spot?
My sister asked me if I’d like to stay with her temporarily, to save money on rent, and put it toward my van, so I took her up on that offer.  
My plan was (and still is) to work as a digital nomad. Which leads me to the conversation last night with my sister.  
She isn’t asking me to move out, she said I can stay as long as needed, but she knows that I can’t wait to get on the road, and that I was going to work remotely, so she asked me, “What are you waiting for?”
I said that I was waiting to be on the road, living the vanlife (which I discovered is a catch-all term, you can live in any vehicle, doesn’t have to be a van per se), so that I would have interesting things to write about.  
I could tell by the look in her eyes that she thought I’m wasting time…..and the epiphany that woke me up at 3:30 am today was……”she’s right!!”. 
I AM wasting time.  Sure, I might take for granted that the things I see and do and think about on a daily basis are just “normal”, but that’s MY normal…..maybe for you, who’s reading this, maybe you can learn something from me…be inspired by me….save some time or money.
My intention was to start a blog once I’m on the road, and have the blog be focused on just that, life on the road….but “what are you waiting for?” made me realise, “I can help someone RIGHT NOW!”,  and if I can help just one person in one way, well, that would mean the world to me!
I named the blog Fiveish because my intention is to always provide five things to help you with, to make it a fiveish minute read, and to post on the 5th of each month (and the 10th, 15th, 20th, 25th and 30th).
If there are topics you’re interested in, please let me know in the Comments section below…..maybe I know something about it, maybe I don’t….and if I don’t, maybe someone else reading this will add their wisdom in the Comments section, and we can all learn something.
Speaking of which:  as the saying goes, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all”.  
I’m open to constructive criticism, but trolls will not be tolerated; please be respectful.

Thanks for giving me five(ish) minutes of your time today!