Category Archives: Moving

A Year and A Day? Or Do it Anyway?

Well I have just about rounded out my stressful on-call week and I turn the pager over on Monday. I had a Saturday upgrade that went flawlessly, which is a good feeling and proof of my accomplishments thus far in learning an entirely new language (TACL) as well as all the intricate goings on for the custom applications the company I work for has developed. Most of the information isn’t attainable except thru doing and it’s been the most challenging position I’ve ever taken on. It will feel WONDERFUL to hand over on-call come Monday and have my after work life back for a week. To do things like see the sky, mow the lawn, do the dishes…You know, the basics. I took on the challenge for a few reasons, one was because I knew I could do it and another was for the experience of doing it. Not to just say things are “stressful” but to know how that feels. Not only to say I took on a challenge but to go thru that expeirence and come out on the other side of it. It may just be that it’s time to let those experiences go, and take on something new again.

What the Feeling of Freedom Might Look Like

This is an interesting feeling for me because when I can go for a walk and see the sky it feels…well I feel totally and comletely free again. The juxtaposition of these two mental states is drastic.

This past week has been challenging not only for me, but for Cassie as well. I’d say we have come the closest to pulling the “GTFO lever” we have been so far. This is a good thing, as it means we are ready not only financially but also mentally for the transformation/graduation into our new lives. We are at the point where our minds are picking out signs from the universe that our new program has been developed and is ready to run.

“The program has been developed and ready to run“: I have had the strange belief that our environment is simply a software program since I was little and that when a person goes on vacation, it is just a new “level” in the game. When you go to new places it takes time to get there because it has to be created or developed before you arrive. All the people, places, plants, roads and everything in your story that makes up our reality has to be created first.

So I think the program is set. We have decided that we can stick it out longer if we want, but if we continue to have these discussions at a serious level that we have been, that we can go at any time. One of the signs the universe has given us lately is a video we saw online (thanks Claire!). It speaks to us because there are so many reasons that we can come up with to wait and plan more, and save more, and talk about more but really when you get down to it, we should just DO IT ANYWAY!

If you’re paralyzed by the voice in your head,
It’s the standing still that should be scaring you instead.
Go on and … do it anyway.
Do it anyway.

check it out the video below:

The comments made on the previous post are wonderful and we thank those who give us feedback! We don’t really have a reason not to, except that we don’t want to give up the opportunity for saving more “goal fodder” as I call it. Otherwise known as money. That however has become less important, especially when work gets us down in the dumps.

Call it surrender, but you know that it’s a joke
And the punchline is you were actually never in control
But still, surrender anyway…

We want to leave on our own wishes with a feeling of preparedness and that we are looking forward to our new lives, not that we got pushed out by our old. We will continue to push forward, it’s getting close though…Very close! We have set a drop dead date of October 15, 2013 which is a year and a day from today. I think we have come to the conclusion that it can be any time between now and then! So watch out world, here we come!

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Timeline to Move to Puerto Rico

You’re Living in the Wrong Place!

Colorado Bucket/To-Do List Before Moving to Puerto Rico

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We have started to talk about what we need and want to do here in Colorado before we move to Puerto Rico. I think of moving to Puerto Rico sort of like graduating from school and moving on to the next thing in life. And of course before graduation there is usually a checklist of things to get done first. So here are a few that we have started to put into motion. I am sure there will be more that we do or think of but this is a start:

Curvy mountainous roads

1. Climb a 14er. If you haven’t ever heard of the term “fourteener” you probably aren’t from Colorado. Everyone here knows that a 14er is a mountain that is over 14,000 feet high. Colorado has the most mountains over 14,000 feet so there are a lot to choose from as you can tell from this list. We are thinking Mt. Bierstadt as it is a beginner mountain and can be done in about 6 hours (3 hours up the mountain and 3 hours down). And it is also fairly close -about 2 1/2 hour drive from Greeley. We’ve done most other things in Colorado that it’s known for including skiing, snowshoeing, snowboarding, sledding, hiking, bicycling, white river rafting,camping, etc but we haven’t yet been to the summit of a 14er. It’s a must and will take some training to do.

Pretty mountains in Estes Park, Colorado

2. Visit my dad’s gravesite in Meeker, Colorado. My dad decided he wanted to be buried in his hometown of Meeker, Colorado which is about 6-7 hours away by car. My mom went to see him buried, but the rest of have not yet seen his final resting place. We were waiting on the headstone to arrive before we went there, and so it should be there by now. We are hoping to time this trip with the peach harvest in Palisades and Grand Junction and have a little fun while we are there too.

3. Begin moving our rental properties to a management company. We had been waiting on this one because a management company charges about 10%, but now that we have a few whose leases are coming due (or people who want to break them), we think this would be a good time to transfer management over. There is no way we will be able to manage the day-to-day things especially if there is turnover when we are living in Puerto Rico. This year with a management company will give us a good idea of how it will work (or what we need to tweak) when we are away. Plus it should save us some stress having some help with them.

4. Stand at the four corners. I would like to go down south to the only place where four American state lines intersect. These states are: Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona. Then we could say we were in 4 places at once! On this trip I would also like to see Mesa Verde, the Garden of the Gods, and other southern Colorado attractions that I either haven’t seen or it has been a long while.

5. Visit/walk around every park in Greeley. Greeley is a park city. The city planners definitely did a good job with the parks as you would be hard pressed to live in a neighborhood that doesn’t have a park. When we first moved to our house, we were in that minority, and then they built “our” park, Ramseier Farm Park which is just about 1 block outside our little subdivision. We have visited most parks in Greeley, but Britton said he found a list with some that we hadn’t even noticed!

6. Throw a big going-away party. Yah, we’re already thinking about the party- well parties plural because we want to have a house-warming party in PR too once we get things fixed up and furnished.

Taken from the tower at The Dam Store near Devil’s Backbone

These are some of the big ones that we want to do in the next 500 days or so. Obviously there are a lot of small day-to-day things that will need to be taken care of like selling everything, packing, making arrangements for the animals (who’s going and who’s staying?), etc. But can you think of anything else we definitely should do before we leave Greeley, or Colorado or our current lifestyle?