The Starting Point

Hi, we’re new here so I’ll start with where we are today.

On paper, we’ve successfully checked every box we are supposed to: college, careers, nice cars, a happy marriage, a beautiful house, two awesome dogs and a whole lot of stuff.

What we don’t have is time. Time to spend with each other. Time to disconnect. Time to take care of all our house chores. Time with friends. Time to do the things that make us feel good, like as exercise and travel. 

On the flip side, we are finally at a place in our lives where we have money to take a vacation or buy a new car if we want. While we have never lived extravagantly, we are very comfortable. Do two people really need 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms and nearly half an acre of land? Probably not.

We have both thrived in our careers. Numerous promotions, professional development opportunities, great benefits and truly great people. People spend lifetimes never finding what we have.

The stuff that we shed blood, sweat and tears to acquire over the last 10 years isn’t making us happy. And, we have made the very hard decision to do something different. We don’t know what exactly that will look like yet but we know it won’t involve being slaves to material things.

Looking back, it’s easy to see that this decision has been a long time coming but it still scares the heck out of us.

One thing you’ll learn about us is that we are people who act and act fast. We made the decision to move back home to Florida after seven years in New England on a 24-hour road trip. We made a plan with a timeline and did it.

It’s easy to become paralyzed with the details of a big life change. It’s scary and it will be a ton of work. But, we work well together. It’d be much easier to continue showing up to the job that deposits a hefty paycheck in my bank account every other week, convincing ourselves that this is just what people need to do to be happy.

Ironically, today is our sixth wedding anniversary. The best decision I ever made was to share this life with my best friend. It helps that he’s about as crazy as I am and willing to start over with me.

I’ve spent most of my career in communications and Tom was once a professional photographer. So I’ll do my best to document this new adventure in words while Tom will do so in photos. Maybe someday we will share with others. We’ll figure it out as we go.