Starting over

As of today, John has decided to leave his job and we've put our house up for sale and we are planning to move to Portland.

It all seems sudden doesn't it?  Well, it's not really.  This has been coming on for months now.  Years, really.

We live in Utah.  And Utah is a fine place to live, I mean it's got four distinct seasons and it's relatively safe, very family friendly, decent schools, reasonable cost of living, lots of recreational activities...  But, for John and I, me in particular, it's just not a good fit.  It's REALLY conservative, and we're much more liberal.  It's REALLY religious and we're non believers.  We've both been here all our lives and it just feels like it's time to go.  It's time to find a place where we do fit in. 

As long as we've been together we've talked about moving out of Utah, and our ideal destination has always been San Diego. But when we really consider it, we realize it's not a good fit either.  It's simply too expensive.  So when we began thinking seriously about moving out of state, we looked at this great country of ours and started to talk about what exactly we want.  We want to be within a day's drive or less of Salt Lake City so we can come home to visit often.  We don't particularly like four seasons.  In fact, we'd much prefer only two seasons if possible.  We don't like really hot summers or snow at all so a milder climate was a must.  Alex has really bad excema so we'd like a more humid climate to help relieve some of his skin troubles as well as good air quality because of his and John's athsma. We want to be in a place that is much more liberal than here as well as a more diverse group of people (different ethnic groups, religions and lifestyle choices.  Everyone here is white, Mormon and married with kids, and even though we're white, married with kids, it's really kind of boring.).  Of course we want to live in a town that is family friendly, safe with good schools.  John wants to be within driving distance of professional sports teams and I've always wanted to be within a few hours of the coast. 

When looking at all these parameters, we narrowed our choices to Washington and Oregon.  Specifically Seattle and Portland.  It's been a tough decision to choose between Seattle and Portland because it seems like they are very similar, and we've never been to either city.  Seattle's job market seems to be doing much better than Portland, but Portland's cost of living is lower. In the end though, we've decided to go to Portland.  Mostly because it feels like a good fit for us.  What we hear and read about the people and the general way of life in Portland really appeals to us. 

As for John's job, he hasn't been happy for over a year. He accepted a promotion to a position that hasn't been a good fit for him and a couple of months ago, it became clear that it never will be a good fit.  We began to talk seriously about him leaving his job and what we'd need to do to survive financially and the only answer was to sell our house.  Which is a tough decision seeing as how we LOVE our house.  But it's no use living in a house you can't afford, especially if someone has to spend the majority of their life stuggling at a job that just doesn't fit.  So, we began making preparations to sell our house.  The good news is, we got a deal on it when we bought it, so we should be able to break even, which is nearly impossible to do in today's market.

So here we were, talking about selling our home and John leaving his job and it occurred to us that if we have to start all over, this might be the perfect opportunity to start over in a new place!  Then I freaked out a bit over the fact that we'd be leaving family and my parents moved me away from family when I was Alex's age and it sucked, and is this the right decision? Are we ruining our kids' lives forever by isolating them in the Pacific Northwest with no grandparents or aunts or uncles or cousins to play with?  And then I snapped out of it and realized that we're moving to Oregon, not Egypt.  We're a 12 hour drive away, or a two hour flight.  And in this day and age with blogs and Facebook, Flickr and webcams, I am more confident than ever that we can maintain close relationships with our friends and relatives back home.

The snag in our plan is that we don't have jobs secured in Portland.  John's been sending out resumes for a couple of weeks, but it's tough out there these days and employers often don't even look at the out of state resumes.  Our best bet is to just go out there and rent an apartment and start looking for work.  Of course we haven't sold our house here yet, and we'd be supporting two households while UNEMPLOYED.  We're lucky that we have the funds to support our family for a few months. It's when our funds run out, if we don't have jobs yet, that it will get hairy.

But, it will also be an adventure!

I am looking forward to simplifying our life.  Living in a smaller space with less stuff.  Getting back to basics, and feeling happy in the things that matter instead of always trying to get ahead, get more, do more, etc...  It will be an adjustment.  It will be a difficult few months.  But, I am confident that our family will come through this change stronger and happier than we've ever been.