My home has a contract on it and I am shoulder deep in boxes. I have never been a fan of moving and Lord knows I have done my fair share of it. I keep lying to myself with each move saying, "this will be the last move". All the while knowing it won't be and I am not sure if I will ever have the feeling that "this is it".
I didn't start out as a nomad. I was born and spent all my life in one city until i hit my twenties and then I met someone who was hell bent on moving and that is where it all started. I had no desire to leave my hometown but wanted to make my other half happy and so I left. We put our home on the market and moved to Pittsburgh.
Funny thing about the move to Pittsburgh was that the timing could not have been worse. We placed our home on the market at the exact start of the housing bubble bursting. Plus, we overpriced our home - in hindsight it was a huge mistake. I used a piggyback loan to buy a home in Pittsburgh and the Florida home sat on the market for three and a half years before it finally sold. So for three and a half years I carried two mortgages. I still do not know how I puled that off but thanks to credit cards and some bill juggling we made it happen.
So Pittsburgh was suppose to be the move to last a lifetime. However, even though we loved the city the job market was horrible. I could never find the job that fit my skills and education. Eventually, I started taking contract out of Pittsburgh.
I went to Indianapolis, Minneapolis, South Bend, State College and San Antonio all while still maintaining a home in Pittsburgh and paying for the unsold home back in Florida - Whew!
The traveling taught me many things. i learned that people in different parts of the country are as different as night and day. I discovered that I could just go with the flow and stay out of all the politics of work and this was amazing. The biggest lesson I learned was that I could live for six months and longer with very little stuff.
My first contract I packed everything I could jam into my small car but over time I took less and less until finally I would take a few bags, a laptop and buy whatever else I needed when I got to the destination. The experience taught me I didn't need all the "things" i had thought were so damn important - it freed me up a bit and I have tried to incorporate that lessen ever since.
Eventually, I came to realize that Pittsburgh just could not work as a home. i could not just keep traveling around from town to town. I was growing tired of that life. So, I did something even crazier. I signed up for the military.
Yup, the process took a while but eventually my Florida home and Pittsburgh home sold and I was off to Commissioned Officer Training in Montgomery Alabama. So began my military life that eventually planted my in Biloxi Mississippi.
Biloxi was a horrible place! The base was wonderful but the town surrounding it was like a slow growing cancer. The city offered casinos and a man made beach - so nasty. Not many other options. I would spend most of my down time in New Orleans or Baton Rouge and over the years I grew to despise living in Mississippi. Now, i am not saying everyone would hate the city, but for me it was equivalent yo living in hell. Maybe in hindsight I should have payed the extra money and lived on base - who knows!
Funny thing is I originally made an offer on a home there but backed out because my gut told me to and things turned out better overall because of that decision.
I spent only for years in the military and decided to separate to finish school and be able to establish some roots. I had a few choices of where I wanted to go after the military. There was Missouri, Texas, Florida and Iowa. We ended up selecting San Antonio mainly because we had been there before and we thought it would be the easiest transition,
We made a trip down and looked at several homes and made a few offers - none worked out. We ended up buying a home we only viewed online. It was not until we arrived in San Antonio we actually got to view the home and it was shocking! Homes photo so much better than they show in person and this house was awful. It was dirty and the repairs/updates the homeowners made were all wrong - so very wrong! I went against my gut and went thru with the purchase and we have spent the last 16 months fixing and redoing everything.
Thankfully, all the hard work paid off because when we listed the home we had many offers within the first 5 days and ended up accepting an over well over our asking price. And that brings us to now where we are getting ready to leave out home and the state of Texas to depart on yet another adventure. i am excited and full of dread all at the same time.
I hope I can look back a year from now and believe that it was all worth it. Hope I am in a home that I love and that I find a job I find rewarding. Only time will tell.......
