Changes

Hello world!

Each blog we have posted has been so short and hasn’t really told you what life has been like for us while we have been here. That makes me sad as I feel very distant and cut off from the rest of my known world and I am ready to start to change this. As we have mentioned in previous blogs, our life has been far from simple and peaceful since we have arrived. In some ways that is good as I have held what I had previously thought was my dream job – acting as the personal assistant to the Communications and Public Relations Director of a 70,000+ employee company. It has had lots of perks and was in a field I really enjoyed and thought I could see a future in. However, its funny how once you get something you thought you always wanted, you don’t want it any more. Some of the very things that attracted me to PR is the constantly changing and exciting role it has in the business – however that translates into unexpectedly long and very stressful hours at the office. Also, I became invaluable and very much needed by my director to get his job done – which is a good thing in many ways. However, as we finalized our plans to only stay through August I saw how difficult it was going to be to take even the vacation time allocated to me, let alone any extra. And the more entrenched I became the harder it was going to be for my director to transition to a new assistant in August.

So, here I was in what could be the perfect job, being paid what I wanted and enjoying the perks, realizing it just wasn’t the place for me here in Scotland. That is why I have decided to quit my job now and not take another one before we leave. I may take a temporary position here and there, but with at least 5 groups of people coming to visit and a few trips of our own planned, it is going to be difficult.

Through all this I have learned a lot about putting my actions where my heart is because even though the job was everything I could have wanted, my (our) life was getting worse and worse. We say our priorities are, in this order, 1) knowing and loving our God and savior better, 2) knowing and loving each other better, 3) enjoying and making the most of our life. None of these were really happening while I was in the job, yet it took 4 months to figure this out. Why is it so hard for us to make our life match up with what our head says our priorities are? In our case I think it was fear. Fear of losing out on a perfect job, fear of hurting my career in the future, fear of the loss of income.

Putting that fear aside and pushing forward to what we know is valuable and meaningful, I have said no to the job and hello to life, at least for the next few months. Here is the exciting thing – it has given Sander and me a chance to really discuss our goals for the next few years and some great things have developed. We know we just have a couple more years (well, at least 9 months for all we know) until we have children and so we have decided to make the most of this time. I have always thrown around the idea of going to graduate school and have been seriously looking into those options, but don’t really feel like that is the best direction for me to head as a PhD isn’t what I want to do with the whole placement issue and a Masters will only allow me to teach community college. I would enjoy that more than teaching K-12 but the cost benefit isn’t that great compared to just tutoring which I can do now. So, another option has presented itself which I never thought was something I could feasibly do. It may be possible for me to take the next two years off of work to attend a Fashion Design program. It is so different than anything I had thought of before as I had in my head if I was capable of a post-grad degree or succeeding in business then that would surely be better than a trade school degree. But as I look at our life I realize that there is still so much to be determined. We may live in Texas the rest of our life, but we may live overseas. We may live in a major city, we may not. There is a lot that we don’t know but what I do know is life is short and that I would rather look back on a life that wasn’t full of the nicest cars or biggest houses but is instead filled with memorable events and days filled with doing things I at least somewhat enjoy. I have always wanted to open my own business and with that I would love to have something to do that fulfils my creative personality while also being able to be the type of mom I want to be.

It is still in the beginning stages as I have a lot to find out before I sign up. But even if I don’t go through with it I am thankful for the possibility as it has kicked Sander and I out of the box we were thinking in and I feel has opened lots of new possibilities for us.

Our nights have been busy but fun as lots of relationships are developing. I get together on Tuesday nights with a good friend to go through the Dulous first semester curriculum. Check it out here as it has been revamped and is really, really great! Sander and I are also starting to facilitate the young adults group at Church every other Thursday night. We are going through the James Logos curriculum, which of course is outstanding. Other than that we just hang out a lot with random groups other nights of the week – dinner with work friends, girls/guys nights on some weekends, and a weekend trip here or there. All in all it stays pretty busy. As we are secret introverts it can all get to be a bit much, but we have high hopes of that changing once I am around to manage the house a bit more during the week.

We really just can’t understand while all the shops and businesses close at 5:00 or 5:30 every day except Thursday when they are open till 7:00 (!!). If you are a service related industry, or even just a regular shop, you have to realize the majority of people work 8:30-5:00 and so you are missing out on a bulk of your shoppers. Let’s look to Italy for our example. They open around 10:00am, close from 1:00-3:30pm and then stay open till 8:00pm after which they go wander the streets and cafes till midnight. Gone are the worries of the 6:15am wakeup alarm in that country. To me, that was a sweet and thoroughly understandable lifestyle. Yes it was inconvenient in the afternoons, but you could see how the quality of life was vastly improved through the inconvenience. If I could figure out a way to live in Tuscany and drive an Alpha Romeo, I would.

One more week at work and then I am back to the flat. I hope to be better about emailing but will mainly blog as much as possible to keep pictures and updates coming. Ciao!