Staying Put

Our dream has always been to move out west. Out west to mountains where we can ski one run continuously for more than 30 seconds! (Fun fact for the day: Lindsay Vohn grew up in Minnesota and spent her early years skiing here. Buck Hill. True, that is the wimpiest of wimpy ski hills we have... but it doesn't get that much better!)

Brett wanted to move right after graduating college, but whoops! He met some total hottie freshman who was so awesome and funny and smart and wonderful (Hi!) that he couldn't leave! So he stayed here for me, the dream crusher.  Then, four years later, I was graduating college and we again want to move out west.  I happened to land a bomb job that fit exactly with my major/minor combo it was ridiculous!  But crap, its here in Minnesota. Just keep crushing that dream!

So we held on to the idea. Brett was between jobs for a while, then we decided to get married and knew we should be here for the wedding, then Brett got a job, and so on and so on. Was our dream ever going to happen? Maybe its not our dream after all? Maybe we just have to wait for better timing? Maybe, maybe, maybe!

For the last two years I've felt in limbo. Wanting to move, bad timing, whatever - we weren't committed to being here, but we hadn't fully committed to moving west either. We were always humming and hawing back and forth about what we should do, unsure of what would be the best decision.  Limbo.

Well, we've decided to stay. Things are really great for us right here at this moment and there is so much that we can be doing and learning in our current jobs. Plus, we have those current jobs! For Brett, after just coming off partial unemployment, he is not anxious to go back to that in a new state.

So here we stay.

And I'm trying really hard to not look at that as a failure. To not feel disappointed. Instead, I want to focus on the opportunities we can make for ourselves here and how staying put is allowing us some more vacation opportunities this spring and summer.  *positive thoughts*

One friend of mine, who moved from Minnesota to Denver to Seattle told me, "I love coming home to see you guys, but if I stay for too long I start to miss it, so I try to keep my visits quick. If I moved home now, I'd feel like a failure."

Um.. 1) I'm still here and I didn't think I was a failure, so thanks?  2)  Whats with that? Why is the distance you move from home seen as a measure of success? Why can't we be successful and be living in our own home town? Is this a generational thing?

Either way, I'm trying to remain positive. Sure, its easiest to move when you are young and fresh out of school, but that doesn't mean we can't move later, right? We can do what works best for us now, and hope that sometime in the future moving will also work for us.

Right?  I'm hoping you all have positive words here to help feed my positive thoughts!

Peace all,
Jen