The internet is a blessing and a curse. One day it offers the perfect video of a baby elephant clumsily chasing birds right when I’m about to fall asleep at my work desk. The next I’m staring at a Facebook wall littered with livid comments because I politely said I think Uber is kind of shady (I get it FB, you love Uber). I’ll end with a blessing, because I’m trying to be more positive in life: Bruno Mars videos. Thanks to a late-night Googling problem, I’ve seen nearly every Bruno video on the World Wide Web. Do yourself a favor: admit that you like Bruno Mars. It will feel good. Don’t worry about being cool. Then go to YouTube. In fact, go now. Go. Now.

When we first decided to renovate an old travel trailer, Bruno and I -- oops! I mean, Carson and I -- spent a lot of those late-night sessions researching those many brave pioneers who came before us. It was pure curiosity at first, testing to see if we were the only ones with this crazy-stupid idea. Also: what were we up against? Five minutes into the hunt and I was sucked into a rabbit hole of trailer renovations so deep that it made me question whether or not we should even attempt to flip Elsie. How the hell could we compete with some of these insane flips? I had trailer envy. I hated every second of it. And truthfully, on that end, Bruno wasn’t much help. He just kept telling me to “hit my hallelujah.”

I know everyone has experienced their own version of internet envy before. That old college classmate you kind of hated got a cool job you wanted. A distant friend is moving to that city you’ve always loved. Your coworker bought that house you’d been eyeballing. Whatever it is, the internet knows how to make us crazy jealous sometimes. I was personally jell that:

People had executed beautiful remodels and we had yet to begin.
Couples (with golden retrievers!) had been traveling the country. We were still in Lincoln.
People had created some great-looking blogs and stores and websites. We had just signed up for Squarespace.

After the envy passed, I found perusing “travel trailer remodels” much more comforting. Now, it was more like that feeling you get when your dad offers to help you with something. You’re hesitant at first, but hear him out. His idea doesn’t sound half terrible, so you decide to try it. And then it works, and he’s legitimately helpful. And the project takes half the time. And even though you had to listen to a lot of bad dad jokes along the way and a few off-topic lectures, it feels good that he was there.

The internet was just like that. THANK YOU, INTERNET.

So, in honor of all those who came before, here’s an incomplete list of the blogs and projects and people that inspired us and helped us. We hope you learn as much from them as we did, and that someday we’re half as good at explaining what we did to Elsie.