How Did We Get Here? Part one.

So, there was this pandemic.

We go about our day to day lives and while sometimes we stop to take stock, most of the time, we do what we always do.  We wake up and start our days- we go to work, we take care of our families, we pay the bills, we try to figure out what's for dinner, maybe we get some time in there for things that make our souls sing (family game night? time with a good book? laughing at a movie on TV? hanging out with friends? whatever it is that refreshes you).  And then, we go to bed, and we get up, and we do it all over again (apologies to The Kinks). 

Once in a while though, something happens that makes us pause and examine what we're doing.  That can be something wonderful (winning the lottery??) but unfortunately, I find it's often the things that are hard to bear that pull me up short.

In the case of this particular Sea Change for me, it started with an announcement that we were "going remote".  We didn't know how to do that. We scrambled, under the shadow of fear of this virus that was spreading fast and killing people. We thought (hoped?) that by doing this- by hunkering down, going remote, washing our groceries, wearing our masks, and learning how to eyeball the distance of 6 feet to socially distance ourselves- we'd get through it and get back to normal.

Boy, what we didn't know.

As this dragged on and on and on, it became increasingly clear that, for the foreseeable future, this IS normal.  Ouch.

Not gonna lie. I suffered. I needed my people. I needed my kids who moved half a country away. I  needed to do the work I love- that is a huge part of my identity- in the ways I loved to do it. Face to face. Person to person. I believe in the energy exchange between beings. And mine was sapped, with no source of fuel. I won't go into all the details of the Ugly Phase. Suffice it to say, it deserved that label.

And this ugliness raised some questions for me. Namely, why am I doing the day to day the way I do? I've been wanting to get out of this cold, dark Northeast for decades, in a vague sort of "someday" way. Every winter is the winter of my discontent (sorry, Bard). And now that one bird had flown the nest, and the second was prepping his wings for flight, it was time to more seriously think about moving on.

Moving on is complicated though, isn't it? On paper, it's a process, a list of to-do's: Find a place to live somewhere warm, sell the house, quit the job(s), get a new job, buy a new house.  Neat and tidy, checkboxes to tick and move to the next.

Life's not neat and tidy, though, so the actual doing of the moving on thing is really pretty overwhelming. Find a place somewhere warm to live.... oh, but one with a community that shares my values.  Sell the house... oh, right, those bathrooms upstairs, yikes.  Quit the job.... that also means leaving my people, and that hurts my heart.  And so on, and so on.

So I started taking baby steps, moving in the direction of moving.  Get the house remodeled. Research places in The South that I could tolerate.  Look at the finances- how do we make this work?  The one silver lining- we DID figure out how to "go remote", so that was going to make moving away a whole lot easier. Actually, it would make it possible.

Still, though, a lot of this was mental exercise. I mean, we did the remodeling- but we figured we'd get to enjoy it for a few years before we sold the house. There was still a vague "someday" quality to it all.

And then someone I love, lost someone she loved. And that was a whole new "take stock" moment.

This is a long post. If you're still reading, bless your heart. (Practicing speaking South.)  I'm going to take a pause here before Part 2. So, stay tuned.