Monthly Archives: June 2011

Funny thing: you make a move to change your life, and, well, your life changes.

When we made the decision to move away from the big bad city, it was intentionally the first step on a journey toward creating the sort of life we want to be living, to getting started on a path that would ultimately lead to a little piece of land, lots of hard work, and more independence, in all the ways that word could be applied–energy independence, financial independence, personal independence.

I thought I had a pretty good idea about how it would all play out. I had all the variables in mind, and how they’d fit together, gears in this machine that would drive our dream forward. But something to remember about variables is just that: they’re variable. Once one of those gears starts to morph, the others have to bend to fit.

Change isn’t an event; it’s a cascade, and one that doesn’t always proceed in the direction envisioned.

The land purchase is put off for a while, for a few different reasons: because we’re not ready to give up biking as a primary form of transportation, because there’s too much fun to be had in our new home town, because we both have mixed feelings about the concept of home “ownership” as it currently stands. So in the next few years, we’ll be urban homesteaders, after a fasion (which I understand is tres chic at the moment–we are such trendy folk). Later, we’ll retreat into good old mountain hermit living, as planned. One variable, varied.

Then there’s the fact that my field–EMS–isn’t in North Carolina what it was in New Mexico. There are far fewer job opportunities, a very distinct glass ceiling, a different (and, to me, less desirable) professional culture, and lower pay across the board. I need a new vocation, and sooner rather than later. So another variable shifts.

Then, the internal factors: my grand dream initially (and perhaps naively?) involved a strict aversion to taking on any new debt. I’ve feared debt for a long, long time–since my days of taking a calculator to the grocery store, because I had to calculate down to the penny what my meager foodstuffs were going to cost me, lest I overdraw my bank account. I’ve feared it since the time when I sold my CD collection to pay the rent, since learning credit card restraint the hard way all those years ago. Once I corrected those mistakes, I didn’t want to get into anything remotely like them again. Like most phobias, it’s not entirely (or even remotely) rational. Sometimes debt is debt, and is better avoided; sometimes a better word for it is investment. Once you make that shift, and realize that carefully chosen debt can be a tool, useful for building a future, a whole world of possiblity opens up: go to grad school! start a business! buy land! And there goes another variable.

Which is all to say that great change is afoot.

After the hailstorm that seemed to decimate my little garden, a surprising thing happened: most of those plants just kept growing. A cucumber plant with a shattered stem is working on blossoms as we speak. Tomato plants were knocked down but not out–I ate my very first homegrown tomatoes just a few days ago, plucked from a still-horizontal stem. The greens straightened back up and reached again for the sun. I graze on them every time I’m standing on the porch.

The same sort of recovery is going on in my head right now, as we’ve proposed and dissected a couple of options for Bigtime Change. It’s a large part of the reason you’ve haven’t seen much of me here. It’s easy for me to become overwhelmed by blog guilt–people who are far busier than I with livestock or novels or art or really interesting jobs manage not to disappear from their own blogs for weeks at a time. (But then I have to remind myself that plenty of writers still do just that. Going Easy On Oneself is a daily, repetitive task. Who knew?)

I’m here. We’re going new places. You’ll hear about it soon.