Greetings everyone! On the second anniversary of the original “A Blog a Day For 30 Days,” I have decided to do it again. But before we get on with the blogs, many of which will be older posts like finishing up Germany or even the Mobilization Journal, I have a very important announcement to make that many will probably find very interesting. I also intend to do some other things, like expand on my favorite movies and write a little bit more about stocks and investing in advance of my upcoming career change, but we’ll see what the immediate future holds.
Frankly, this is something that has been a long time coming, and was probably going to happen a bit sooner if not for the Writer’s Development Program starting in July. So I guess I should get on with this important announcement:
After nearly ten years of living in Connecticut (November would have marked my ten-year anniversary), I am glad to announce that I will be returning home to the great state of Utah, the land of my birth, sometime in January 2012.
Ten years ago, upon deciding to move to Connecticut, I never thought I would ever return to live in Utah. But that is how you think when you feel committed to someone and think you are going to spend the rest of your lives with them. While I did not think that I would spend the rest of my days in CT, Utah was probably in the bottom 25% of potential places I would live again. It wasn’t because it is a particularly bad place to live. I enjoyed nearly 20 years of life there. And I also don’t necessarily think it will be where I spend the rest of my life either. For now, however, it is where I want to spend the next phase of my life.
After I got divorced in April 2008, I considered moving back then. I didn’t feel like I had anything really holding me to CT anymore other than a job that I hated and a condo that I couldn’t (and probably still can’t) sell. But I wasn’t quite ready to give up on my little life here, so I stuck around. The pull back home was especially strong in January 2009, after about 6 months of really being miserable in all facets of my life. However, shortly after that, it was announced we were going to deploy, and I felt that I couldn’t abandon my Army brethren after training with them for the previous 8+ years. So I stuck around long enough to deploy with them.
While deployed, I contemplated the decision again. My parents were getting towards the end of their working lives and I felt that I could go home and help them enjoy the retirement they truly deserved. My sister had her first child, a child that, if I remained elsewhere, I would only see once or twice a year, much like my first nephew. And CT just did not have the same appeal anymore. Towards the end of the deployment, when I gave up on the Army and decided not to reenlist, knowing full well that I would also lose my job, I no longer had that crappy job that I hated, holding me in a state to which I no longer had any deep ties. Granted, there are a few handfuls of people that I consider close friends, but they are also people that I could maintain a friendship from afar.
As I lost my job in April this year, I quickly tired of trying to find work in CT. No entry-level job in my new field of accounting would pay me nearly enough to help me get out of the financial rut that I was in. I applied for the Writer’s Development Program at The Motley Fool as my “dream” job, interviewed for it, but forgot about it as I turned my attention to finding something more permanent. But for every job that I looked at in CT, I applied for four more in Utah. Utah, with its lower (than CT) standard of living, with its familial cushion that would allow me to try to find something I loved doing, had more appeal to me. It was then that I decided I would be moving back to Utah, as early as July or August, hopefully with a job in hand. If not, it would be a struggle, and I had already once moved across the country without a job in hand. I didn’t really want to do that again if I didn’t have to.
Then, a (short-term) dream came true. I was offered a position in the Writer’s Development Program, with near certain promise of a job as a freelance writer upon the completion of the program. I now had additional incentive to take this opportunity. Not only was it a paying gig for six months in one of my favorite places in the country, with training in something that I want to do, but it was also a near certainty that I would have a job that I could do from anywhere upon completion. I decided that I could put of my desire to move back home for this opportunity, regardless of some of the other things that I would be delaying by doing so.
There you have it. All the people back home in Utah that have been longing for me to come home will finally have me in their presence again. For all the friends that I will be leaving behind in CT, you now have an excuse to come see the beauty of Utah (or you can meet me in Las Vegas, a short 8 hour drive away). I will be back to CT to visit at least once a year until people no longer invite me, for CT still had a major part in my life for the past decade.
Until next time…
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