To be honest, I had never heard of the word “furlough” before starting this job. I have sat on the jumpseat and listened to senior flight attendants share stories about their furlough days countless times, but didn’t really ever think it would happen to me. I thought that was a thing of the past. Surely as well functioning society and company we could handle whatever life threw at us, right?
Our airline was flying high earlier this year. Expansion was going to be huge. Our seniority was going to boom and as a flight attendant seniority is EVERYTHING. We had already started to get a huge influx of new hires from 2019 and the start of 2020. I held a hard line (always had a schedule, never on reserve) in Washington, Dulles and Raul had received and accepted his transfer to our new satellite base in Austin, Texas where we envisioned settling down and I wasn’t too far down on the list to join him. Life was so good and panning out perfectly for us both.
This pandemic hit. 🚨 And it hit hard. We look back at all the decisions we were making that were in fact leading and setting us up to be successful during this hardship.
Right before COVID hit we had traveled extensively through Thailand creating content to start a flight attendant travel blog.
This travel blog was something that I really leaned towards doing because before I was a flight attendant I was a full-time blogger for my travel & style blog, She’s on the Loose. I knew we wanted to share our travels with friends and family so it was natural for me to gravitate towards blogging. We weren’t necessarily looking to creating an income with our blog or our instagram, but thought it would be a fun venture for us both. So when we went to Asia in February we treated it like a “work trip” creating as much content as we possibly could. So fortunately we have a ton of stuff to share while we are unable to travel due to travel restrictions. This blog and our instagram has allowed us to create a passive income to help us along during this time of furlough and we are so glad we were proactive with our content and time before the pandemic.
We saved a bunch of money for a down payment on a lake house.
Unfortunately, now that we don’t have jobs we can’t buy a house, but we are comfortable. We are not scrambling for money and having to run off to get new jobs to keep afloat. We have the mentality that most Europeans have: we work to live. We do not live to work. Our lives are spent doing things that we love. That’s why we don’t work desk jobs. We both have degrees and could find jobs in our career fields if we wanted to, but honestly that would be an absolute last resort for us. We want to see the world and inspire others. Our lives will be filled with memories and stories for our kids. I have no need to sit behind a desk and work to fulfill someone else’s dream. We want to fulfill our own. I want to live a life that is worth living to me.
We moved out of our townhouse in D.C. earlier this year.
My parents own several properties and one of them is a ranch house in a tiny town about 3 hours from Houston on a little over 30 acres. When we moved from D.C. we moved in to my family’s ranch house as a transition so that we could find a place near Austin where we would put down roots. This was such a blessing. We are able to save so much money staying there now and not be wasting money on rent or overwhelmed with a mortgage now that we both our furloughed. It’s crazy how things happen for a reason!
We are able to care for my disabled, senior dog, Cowboy.
I have joint custody (if you will) of my pup Cowboy with my ex. We split time taking care of Cowboy and he was always so generous to take the bulk of the responsibility when I lived in D.C. and didn’t come back to Texas much. I lost out on about 2 years of Cowboy’s life while I was living on the east coast and am so lucky to spend the rest of his life with him. Right as we got back my ex got hurt on the job and then had a medical incident that really prevented him from taking care of Cowboy, but it was miracle timing I was back in Texas and able to take on the responsibility because we are both home pretty much 24/7. Cowboy has degenerative mylethopy which is a painless disorder (thank god) but now his back legs are completely immobile. If I didn’t have Raul with me there is no way that I would be able to take care of Cowboy (a 60lbs Boxer) on my own. The timing of all of this was incredible. I am so thankful to be able to take care of Cowboy and spend so much time with him to make up for those couple of years I was gone.
Reserve life prepared us to expect the unexpected and lineholder life prepared us to be flexible and open to new adventures.
Life is certainly keeping us on our toes, but as flight attendants we wouldn’t have it any other way.We are excited for this new chapter in our lives being grounded 🛬 (for what we hope won’t be too long), but we are so grateful we are doing it together.
This job completely changed my life. It gave me a love that lights up my everyday with just a smile and a silly pun. It gave so many memories of nights we can’t forget (even if we want to! 🤣). It gave me the opportunity to experience the world. And now it has given me the opportunity to be with family when it really matters. It’s not a goodbye to flight attendant life – it’s a see you later. We can’t wait to get back to flying. When we get recalled you’ll be the first to know! Be sure to follow and connect with us on instagram for our day to day adventures and the latest update of our lives!
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