A New Year has dawned.
And as many of us do, I find myself in a contemplative sort of mood. My best thinking has always been done "on paper" (nowadays oft translated to a keyboard and screen), so I sat down with my thoughts on the morn of this bright and shiny new year and wanted to spend some time clickity-clacking away, trying to record the momentous twelve months that 2016 was.
In the spirit of authenticity, I just wrote and deleted an entire paragraph of realness. The ugly side of realness. This past year has had some record low points to be sure...and many of them are following me unwelcomed into 2017. But something I've learned is that very few people can truly handle your junk. Most don't care, offer unhelpful platitudes, or call you a whiner. - So I'm going to spare you (and myself) a trip to Negative Nellieville, and we'll focus on the definitive highlight of the year in this post. Just know, our life certainly isn't all rainbows and unicorns.
This year was one to remember in our household. It was the year we decided to
LEAP.
There have been stirrings in our hearts for some time now...years really. They started the first time we found ourselves in the European countryside. Because there...nearly five thousand miles away from "home" we truly did find ourselves. Not only that, but we found our kindred. Our people. The way of life that makes us come alive.
My husband and I have never really been at home here in America. The national status quo smothers our very souls and turns our hearts a delicate shade of grayish blue more often than not. We have always had a hard time connecting with people because of it. It's hard, nowadays, to find kindred spirits who value slow living. But we felt stuck...stuck in the rat race...stuck in societies expectations...stuck in the American way.
If you know me, you know that I'm a people pleaser, a planner, sentimental, a homebody, and most definitely NOT a risk taker. But this year shattered all of those things I thought I knew about myself.
This year I decided to stop existing, and start LIVING.
We've been talking, my husband and I, about how to make this European lifestyle we so connect with a reality here across the pond. It seemed (still seems, sometimes?) nearly impossible. I wasn't ready for a big change. Then my husband wasn't ready for a big change. But this year, we both found ourselves there at the same time. Ready. Ready to try anyway. And what is life, if not for following hard after your dreams...even if it may mean failure. To us, it's worth the risk. -
I remember well the moment: sitting in Patty on a camping trip, reading a book together about the tiny house movement, and in that moment, looking at each other saying, with much fear and trepidation, "Can we really do this??". But we did.
We took the leap.
Up for sale went our beloved Windy Poplars, and after a whirlwind of a season on the market (hello, showings nearly every day for a month), our home of 13 years that we had poured immeasurable blood, sweat, and tears into, was passed to the hands of a new owner at the end of a climactic bidding war. As our realtor said, "Everybody wants to take you to the prom, and you get to choose who you want to go with!" It seemed like a confirmation that a new dawn was just around the bend for us.
Fast forward three months, and we are catching our breath, happily settled into our floft (flat+loft=floft) downtown getting broken in to the next chapter of life that awaits us: living tiny as we continue to search for land. - We have a parcel that we are close to making a move on (prayers appreciated!) which will throw life back into high gear as we prepare for a build.
So what dreams are we chasing? Well, when I say tiny, I really just mean down-sized. We hope for our main living space to be a small cottage less than 1000 sq.ft. and to have separate guest quarters from which to run an Airbnb. We plan to shrink our mortgage, our maintenance load, and our subsequent servitude to both. We hope to be able to focus more on living, on helping to build strong marriages, on mentoring others whose hearts might be pulled in the direction of slow living, on working less and experiencing more, on being a part of a community instead of the isolated rural life we lived for so long, on savoring, on traveling, on truly living.
And we'd love to have you follow along on our journey! It's sure to be an adventure. :-)
