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CNN Sunday Morning

Interview With Marilyn Abraham, Sandy McGregor, Kate Convissor

Aired September 08, 2002 - 11:20   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Imagine checking out of your career, exchanging your mortgage for a home on the road and living every day like a tourist. Well, it sounds impossible.
Well, some people are doing just that. Whether it involves living out of an RV or moving to some remote spot on the globe, they say it's all about reinventing their lives. And often it is a major life crisis that perhaps may provoke someone to take -- make these choices for themselves and for a lot of folks, they just want to re- evaluate their priorities and make changes.

So Marilyn Abraham and Sandy McGregor are just such a couple. We've only separated guys only because we figure you guys have been living in close quarters for so long or really, it's because of our microphone problems, but thanks a lot for joining us from New York.

MARILYN ABRAHAM, ON PERMANENT VACATION: You're welcome.

WHITFIELD: And you're going to be talking about how you've made some major life changes and also joining us from Ann Arbor, Michigan, we have write Kate Convissor. Her family has escaped the work a day world, at least you did it for about a year-and-a-half, right, Kate.

KATE CONVISSOR, AUTHOR: Yes, 18 months, we were on the road.

WHITFIELD: All right, well, go to see you all. All right, Kate, let me begin with you guys. You and your family, you and your two kids, you decided you know what, I've had enough of the regular day- to-day grind. Let's just go ahead and get ourselves a camper like RV and just hit the road. Why did you decide to make such a drastic -- or take just a drastic measure?

CONVISSOR: It sounds drastic when you're starting out, but looking back it seems like such a natural thing to have done. There were actually three reasons that we decided to do this. The first reason was that we wanted to travel and this was an easy and a cheap way to do it. The second reason was that we really did want to just put everything -- all the components of our lives on the table. It was a good time in life to do that, and we wanted to re-evaluate. We wanted to decide what to leave on the table and what to take off.

WHITFIELD: But even with teenage kids, it would seem that that would make it a much more difficult decision to not only uproot your lives as parents, as a family, but for the kids, take them out of school and decide, you know what, you're going to get your education on the road. CONVISSOR: Yes, it was. And that was the other reason. The third reason that we went was really we wanted to remove our kids from the peer thing and the media thing and all of the pressures that that age group feels so strongly. And we wanted to show them and experience along with them what we hoped would be a really wonderful and awesome adventure.

WHITFIELD: And you all took your adventure from Michigan to New Orleans, to Baja to British Columbia. That does sound like a pretty awesome adventure. You even wrote about it just as our other people Sandy and Marilyn also wrote about their experiences. But one thing that struck me that you wrote -- you said, "You know, we set out not only to find America, to see America, but also find ourselves." Do you feel like as a family you did that?

CONVISSOR: I wouldn't seen say it was finding ourselves but it was definitely two journeys. It was definitely an inner journey as well as an outer journey and that was something that I consciously set about preparing for and expecting. And it truly was an unexpected and -- both the journeys happened. And I think John Steinbeck says, you don't take a trip, a trip takes you and that was -- that was absolutely what we all experienced, was that this trip took us and it took us places we never expected to go both internally and, you know, into America, into the Americas.

WHITFIELD: Well, it sounds as though you really are highlighting the rewards there but surely there have to have been moments where either you or perhaps one or both of your kids said, "OK, enough is enough already, you know, I really want to get back to television sets or cell phones or at least have a regular shower."

CONVISSOR: Oh, yes, a hot shower. Hot showers. There were many, many times like that and I think that was also part of the surprise. The travel is difficult. It's very difficult to keep heading out into unknown places that you've never been before. It's just -- the logistics of it are difficult. Where do you find a hot shower? I mean we didn't for long periods of time. The thing is that we got really good at traveling so that we could go into remote places and live comfortably by our standards as long as we had a water source.

WHITFIELD: All right, Kate, hold on a minute. Let me bring in Sandy as well as Marilyn. Now, for you all, does this sound familiar? You all decided to make a very drastic decision as well. You gave up very lucrative and successful careers up in the book world of publishing and editing. You all made an awful lot of sacrifices in order to take your adventure on the road, didn't you, Marilyn?

ABRAHAM: We didn't feel it was making sacrifices so much as really a means to save our lives and enhance our lives. We watched six friends in the period of six months pass away, all under the age of 55. The workplace had become a lot less fun and a lot less stimulating than it had been say 25 years earlier when we began our careers. And finally, when I came down with an illness and had time to think about all this, it really was, what's this all about. And we wanted to reorder our priorities and take work away from the first place on the list and do something about our friends, our family, each other, our health and really take time to evaluate. And in order to do that, we wanted to hit the road.

WHITFIELD: Sandy, did you feel like they were very important steps you had to make in order to perhaps reduce any kind of credit card debt, think about, you know, letting go of your mortgage, selling your home? Did you ever worry about if you get rid of all that, you know, what will you have to come back to if you decide you don't like it out on the road?

SANDY MCGREGOR, ON PERMANENT VACATION: Well, that isn't what we worried about, you know. We worried about trying to make our assets pay for us. We leased our house so that we'd have an income and cover our mortgage. We tried to reduce the amount of things that we had to worry about. Thing anxiety turned out -- you know, all our toys turned out to be -- make us anxious in the end. So it was really good to hit the road and not have to worry about all that stuff.

We had the best time we've ever had living in 240 square feet and we, you know, just shared an adventure together.

WHITFIELD: Well, Sandy, is it your feeling that anyone could do this or are there really just certain candidates that could successfully just kind of leave everything behind and go because it really sounds like you have to have already had a good base at home or in your bank account in order to be able to say, I don't need to work anymore? I'm just going to go on a permanent vacation.

MCGREGOR: Well, I think you have to have -- be through that career-driving portion of your program, because you probably have obligations. You may have kids that have to go to college and you have to provide for that or whatever. Some of us have, you know, aging parents that have to be dealt with. But a lot of those things you can deal with with a little preplanning. And the biggest problem that most people have is credit card debt, you know, which is terribly expensive.

WHITFIELD: Yes, which brings me to a list that I'd like to pull up, that you and Marilyn kind of helped us put together of how you make plans for this, calculating your needs, paying your credit card debt, as you were talking about, planning for major costs, shopping for health insurance and you can always work. What do you mean? You actually pick up maybe a part-time job while you're on the road?

MCGREGOR: Well, yes, absolutely, a lot of people do that, you know.

WHITFIELD: Really?

MCGREGOR: And when Marilyn and I were out there, we weren't sure what we were going to do to make a living, you know. We had been working in the publishing business for 20 some years each, so we were really, really -- it made nervous whenever there was anxiety about how we were going to make enough money. So one of the things we did was come up with backup plans, you know. We thought if we had to, what could we do? And we thought we might be able to work camp at a campground and the worst case, we could flip hamburgers.

WHITFIELD: So Marilyn, did you all have to do that?

ABRAHAM: Well, we did have to figure out a way to make a living and we do do it in a totally different way than we did in Manhattan. We work part-time. We are consultants. I do freelance editorial work and we do some freelance book publishing consulting. And the most interesting thing is that we've also followed our passions because we love food. We love to eat. We love to cook. We've written a cookbook. So now we teach cooking a couple times a year.

WHITFIELD: So you can still write on the road?

ABRAHAM: Oh, yes, yes. The electronic world, as you know, is everywhere. And...

MCGREGOR: And people don't know where you're consulting from. We consult from the north woods or, you know, the tip of Florida.

WHITFIELD: So now, your adventures -- you were in Vermont. You did Alaska before you did the other lower 48 states...

ABRAHAM: Yes.

WHITFIELD: ... you know, including, of course, Vermont. Do you have any advice now for those who -- you're still on your adventure, aren't you?

ABRAHAM: We are still on our adventure although we do have a home base out in the west.

WHITFIELD: OK, so...

MCGREGOR: As Kate said, the journey goes on, you know. It's all about continually reordering your priorities and evaluating your life and looking at change. Change isn't a four letter word.

WHITFIELD: All right, so Marilyn, quickly, your best advice for those who are hearing your words and pretty inspired by all three of you, but that they just need that nudge, I suppose.

ABRAHAM: Sure. Well, what I think is really the failure isn't nearly as hard to cope with as regret, you know. If you want to get out there and do something, do it, just plan for it and get support from people around you who are positive and like-minded and don't listen to the naysayers. If you have a passion, if you have a dream, go out there and follow your heart.

WHITFIELD: And Kate, your best words of advice to inspire those to just hit the road, leave it all behind.

CONVISSOR: I couldn't say it better than Marilyn, just do it.

WHITFIELD: All right.

CONVISSOR: There are just no downsides. WHITFIELD: All right, good job. All right, thanks very much. Kate Convissor, thank you for joining us. And Marilyn Abraham and Sandy McGregor, thank you all.

ABRAHAM: You're welcome.

MCGREGOR: Thank you.

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