Someone asked if I would update my blog so here it goes...
I can't say our life is at all what I expected at this point. We got as far as gutting our old RV, painting the interior and planning out what we wanted to put back in. Then we were offered jobs in the city we had been living in that we didn't feel we could turn down. So we stayed in the city and changed jobs. It worked out amazing for Paul! He has a job that he could only dream about. I guess not even that since he didn't know it was even a real job. After 15 in soul sucking sales, he is living a dream. He loves getting up to go to work. He supports a cause that he really believes in and he gets to play with planes. Even though he had no experience doing anything except sales, through tenacity and perserverence he was able to obtain a wonderful job. Not only does he love what he does but he gets paid really well to do it. He is very lucky.
You probably noticed I didn't mention my change was all sunshine and rainbows. Did you know that being efficient and wanting to work hard is a bad thing? Well evidently it is. I've spent the last 1.5 years being told to slow down and look busy. Not exactly what I expected. Maybe I am not destined to be happy in a job, maybe I am just a really miserable person. Yup, I'm going through a really rough time. I don't know what I want to do but I'm thinking finance isn't it. I've loved parts of my previous jobs, I love training adults and helping people achieve their goals. I love a challenge and I love being insanely busy. I don't do well in an environment where I'm not expected to do anything or that is unfair. I know I've talked about fairness in the past. I'm not realistic in my desires of everyone being treated the same. But can we at least not be blatant about favoritism? I digress. I really really hate feeling like I'm on welfare since I get paid to sit and do literally nothing most days. I've tried to take on duties no one wants, I've tried to streamline processs, I've asked for more work. In all attempts I've been told to stop. At this point you have probably figured out where I work...
We are working on getting our finances in order so we can start building a tiny house. That is still on our list of things to do. We are renting a really awesome place outside of the city we work in. We have our horses and dogs here and have really great landlords. The neighbors aren't bad, a few are pretty nice, one isn't so great but we just stay away from her.
This is our last official year of homeschooling our youngest. It's bittersweet but at the same time welcome. Our oldest is still living off grid on our property an hour from here, running her small store. It's been a series of ups and downs but ultimately she has learned a lot just running the business. Neither kid knows exactly what they want out of life but that's ok. We have made the unpopular decision to dissuade them from going to college right now. I know what a financial burden my school loans have been our entire married life and I do not want that for them. If they decide they know what they want in life and that includes getting a degree, then great! If not then I want them to experience the world and try different things. That doesn't mean you stop learning it just means you don't have school loans.
I'm still singing in Sweet Adeline's with Lorna. We have changed choruses a couple of times and currently drive almost 2 hours to our current chorus but it's enjoyable most of the time. It's been about 8 years since we joined. I've learned a lot about myself and about the art of Barbershop. It's not just about the singing though, it has been about me growing as a person. I've learned that I'm not as bad with people as I thought. It showed me I needed to learn to communicate better, so I took classes to help with that. It showed me that I'm a constant project :)
I'm going to try to update this page more often but no guarantees. I'm going to try to stay upbeat but no guarantees there either.
