december sunday

I’ve had a lot of people say to me recently, “I don’t know how you did it.”

Usually I say, “I don’t know either.”  With two kids under five, two full-time jobs, a giant renovation, selling our old house, a long commute, and learning to take care of this land, it’s objectively crazy. 

But I think I know the answer.  When you want something bad enough, you just do it.

Last weekend we frolicked around with friends in the backyard.  It was a reasonably warm December Sunday and Kevin smoked a brisket on the deck.  I forgot to tell you—we pried off a planter box from the deck to make more space for our grill and it really opened things up!  We set up a patio heater from Costco to help extend our living space.  Gamechanger.  So with friends over we marched around in the woods and played.  We built a fire in the outdoor fireplace.  We watched football and read books.  We fed the kids brisket and mac and cheese at the table while parents stood around and watched and refilled cups (as we do).  Paper plates and wine cans and excellent company.  My favorite.

When we lived in our old house, we wanted to renovate the master bathroom but never did.  It seemed impossible to scrap together $15k or so and carve out 6 weeks for a super basic upgrade.  Even though we had 2 other bathrooms in the house.  And somehow, when faced with a completely unpredictable project that cost 5x as much and required us to give up our suburban comforts, we charged right on ahead.  Because we really wanted it.  We finally tapped into something that so motivating we found a way.  That’s powerful.  And I don’t mean to imply that we charged into it blindly or stupidly—as you know, we had every inspection done so we’d be eyes wide open.  We carefully calculated the costs of the renovation, scaled back, negotiated, and chose finishes so that we could pay for it from the expected proceeds of our old house. We didn’t go into massive debt and I sure hope we didn’t make a bad financial decision.  But we knew what was important (to us) and we found a way.

I remember waking up sick to my stomach wondering if we were making a mistake.  But then I imagined walking away.  I imagined how sad I would feel.  I pictured us right away looking for the  same thing in another spot.  We would never stop dreaming about it.  Put a different way, as I heard recently on a podcast, the pain of change was less than the pain of staying the same.  The train was moving full-steam ahead.

It helps that I am an extremely future-minded person.  I rarely look back and worry about the past.  I pre-worry and pre-emote a whole lot about the future.  (If you have a similar mindset, you know what I’m talking about; if not, just don’t worry about it and keep reading!)  Now that we’ve “done it,” I can shrug it off like it was meant to be.  But it was painful.  And some days it still is.  But we are pleased to be living it, we are proud of ourselves, and we have a new sense of possibilities.  Because when you really want something, you can do it, and you will!