Get Out, Stay Out.

Guest Post by Justin Cox, founder of Arthur Wayne.

A year ago we decided do something a different. We took 3 months off from what we had been considering “the real world” and rented a camper to go on an epic road trip. Officially we were celebrating our one year wedding anniversary. Unofficially, it turned into a great excuse to turn off our phones, buy a surfboard on Craigslist, and drive 8400 miles with the windows down. On the road, we discovered the saying (and hashtag) “Get out, stay out” and in a lot of ways it sums up our trip and how it changed our lives.

For us getting out meant being able to overcome all the reasons we shouldn’t have taken the time off. To simply start. We had good jobs, a mortgage, car payments, and a dog. Not to mention we didn’t own a camper or even have a truck to pull one with. It would have been easy to consider it a dream, realize the unknowns, and retreat back to the comfortable life we had become accustomed to. Instead we jumped in. We borrowed a truck, rented a camper, packed up our hoodies and headed west.

As we look back, staying out is our way of not losing sight of the memories and lessons that we learned along the way and finding ways to instill them into our life back home. While we look forward to taking more time off to travel together in the future, the real impact of the trip is how we live of our lives everyday. Personally and professionally, it’s easy to lose sight of what you want and fall into a rhythm of following the path of others. In the past year as we have focused on following our own path, we’re happier, our relationship is stronger, and our careers are becoming truly ours. #getoutstayout

Gwen and Justin Cox are married and live in Minneapolis, MN. Since their road trip, they’ve both decided to take a different path and start their own companies.