living the change

College promised me that doing the smart thing would set me up for happiness. I look at my dropout friends, and heck my cousin who was given a social graduation from high school, and I gotta say -- Liars! These folks have kids. Sure, they can't drop cash to replace the car when it slips a rod on the freeway, and they've never been to Disneyworld, but those seem small potatoes in comparison.

The most recent expression of "the smart thing" is what we're doing now: staying in Small City rather than potentially moving to Big City in the middle of Nowhere. The potential new boss was not forthcoming with enough information to let us decide for ourselves what kind of a lifestyle change this would be, and we figured out that dropping out before the offer was better for company politics than rejecting an insufficient offer, so here we are.

And where are we? Safe, in Small City, still dreaming and still risk adverse. But slightly more curious about our current ability, with no promotion, to change our lives. It's a good place to be in. It's a smart place to be in.

Now, if only my employer would decide they don't need as many of me, and give me a month or so of unemployment benefits so I could change my career. . .

I need to stop hoping for externals, and hope for courage, resolve, and valor. It's time to really be smart.

to go, or not to go

My Knight in Shining was told about a promotion opportunity at work that would take us far away from our comfy location here in Small City to a big city in the middle of nowhere where the cost of getting a comparable home would be more than 4x our current mortgage. As extra spice, there's almost a guarantee I would not be able to find comparable work because we are members of a marginalized race there, and because it's very much in the middle of nowhere and so expensive to live there, jobs are pretty much the most desirable commodity. Therefore they pay less, not more, than jobs here. In doing some research on things like cost of living and commute time and other basic quality of life questions, we discovered that things having to do with the natural world (hours of sunlight, climate, places to hike, etc) are wonderful, but the things having to do with people (economy, politics, traffic, etc) are . . . disgusting.
Basically if he were offered this and the promotion quadrupled his paycheck we'd be able to squeeze out something resembling our current lifestyle, and maybe in 5 years we'd be able to move back to a place with a more rational take on life and get on with the Big Plan of Kids. And in those five years I'd have sunshine support like I'd never had before, so the lack of garden or belly dance simultaneous with a lack of job might end up working in my favor. At least, it's a prospect I'm having a hard time ignoring now with winter setting in.
Would you trade in a pear tree in your front yard for an avocado tree in a large pot on a condominium deck? Hmmm. Will it actually get us closer to the goal? Ideally, we'd look at the salary they offer, notice that we could live on that in Big City, but decide to live that frugally here in Small City instead. I used to have frugal instincts. I need to find them again.

. . . is the only thing that matters

So, I was reading Hyperbole and a Half the other day, watching Allie recount a story of determination outweighing good sense in the very young, and I (as many of Allie's readers do) saw much of my adult self in her childhood. How many times do I fixate on something that's going to ruin the rest of my day? As an adult it's much worse -- not only should I know better, but usually the object of my fixation isn't even something with immediate gratification. It's not delicious cake with marshmallow animal sculptures, but it's the horrible, horrible fellow commuter who didn't use a turn signal to warn me I was about to be cut off. It's the fact that I slept in again rather than going to my yoga mat. It's the new facebook video game. I don't usually tolerate video games, but for some reason if you make it look like a medieval castle and imply I'm responsible for the well being of hundreds of nameless peasants, I'm liable to try it (and feel guilty if my peasants get raided later on when I inevitably abandon the game.)

So this week I'm trying something different. I'm taking a full break from the video game, I'm deliberately sleeping in and shifting my workout to after I get home from the office, and I'm re-opening this blog to the public. After all, there's a particular brand of complaint that you just can't share with people you know, and your only options are to hire a therapist or write a blog.

I make no pretensions that I will be posting regularly or interestingly. I will share my failures more often than my victories, and some day (when I get more victories) I'll open a completely unrelated blog and probably never tell anyone here about it. I am about to see if there is healing to be found in anonymity, and low expectations.