Welcome to the World, New Blog!

So life has been throwing me monkey wrenches for the past few years now, and every time I've thought I was ready to begin my "real life," something got in the way (sound familiar? If you say no, you're lying!) I think people probably spend most of their lives looking towards the next step, but 3 years ago, I was convinced I was THERE :) J and I had been dating for about 9 months, and when I moved in with him I was totally broke (an issue completely unrelated to my moving in with him!) and trying to figure out what I wanted/needed to do to get on my feet and get us on the road to a better life. I decided to quit my job to go back to school so I could get a career I would really love and see a future in (my current job was fine, but I didn't have any desire to stay there long time). Right after I made that major life change, the following happened:

• J lost his job and we ran out of money to pay rent
  
• My brother got sick and was in the hospital, which meant my parents were taking turns traveling so one of them could be with my one brother in the hospital while the other took care of my other brothers at home
  
• We moved back home to help run the house so my parents could focus on my brother's recovery
• After many, many interviews, J finally landed a job (yay!) A 6 month job (boo!) In Arizona (boo!) And it was July and the middle of the biggest heat wave they've had in decades (MAJOR BOO!)
  
• With only what fit in the car and my parents' credit card (tell me that wasn't depressing for two grown adults! I have the best parents in the whole world, though, that's for sure!) we moved to Arizona with a few days notice.
• I went on interviews, and found a job I really really wanted. I didn't hear back from them. I contacted my old place of work because they'd just opened a new office in Phoenix, and agreed to start working for them again starting the next day. That night, I got a call from the job I'd wanted, offering me the position :( Oh well.

And it was an ADVENTURE! (By that I mean that things were really really hard and kind of sucked, but now when I tell stories about how we lived on spaghetti and hot dogs from the dollar store and served in plastic kids' cups from Applebees when our only two bowls were dirty, they sound kind of funny!) So it was rough, and exciting, and we totally got by, thinking the plan was we'd stay for 6 months while J was making good money working for Chase, and then move back home while he did some more interviews after that.

But after 6 months we realized something important - Arizona is CHEAP and California is EXPENSIVE! :) So even though I have never been (and never will be) the primary breadwinner in the family, we made the decision to stay in Arizona and try to live off my salary while J looked for another job. And meanwhile, we had friends to spend time with, and even though I'd never intended to go back to work for the same company again, it had nothing to do with the people or the actual work itself, so I was challenged and found things I enjoyed doing and took pride in doing them well. J got a job working at Best Buy (which he really really enjoyed, but it's certainly a few steps down the ladder from being a computer programmer, mostly pay-wise!) but we still didn't really know what we were doing or where we'd be in the next few months.

And then suddenly, J got a call asking him to come back to Chase for another contract, but this time with the possibility to become a permanent employee! So while I'd told my work I'd be leaving, they let me stay, and J transitioned back to work with the hope this time it would be for good!

(I'm betting you can guess what came next though . . . )

It was not for good! The funding for the position didn't come through, so we would soon be back to living on my salary, and I wasn't happy with my work anymore (again, nothing against the company or my co-workers). I needed the job, but in my heart, I really I didn't want to deal with the issues going on in the office anymore. I was MISERABLE. So I started talking about transferring to another position within the company. There was the possibility of moving to Berkeley, but it didn't pay enough to pay rent in the Bay Area. So I just kept on doing the same job I'd never intended to be doing this long, and J kept going on interviews.

Finally, good news! J got a job back in San Diego, where we had family and friends, and this time it was permanent (no more worrying about where we'd be living in 6 months!) It was a pay-cut to get the job, but it was a JOB and that was what mattered :) And the office I'd started working in originally had room for me on board, so I had a job to off-set the cost of living in Southern California, hooray!

And it's been a year now that we've been back. And it's been great - we have good friends, I get to see my family a lot more often, and you really can't beat San Diego as a beautiful place to live. BUT, I'm still working at a job that doesn't hold a place in my heart, and enough time has gone by now that I don't want to go back to school and start a new career, because I'm very very ready to start a family. And I've always been very sure that I want to be able to raise my kids myself - I don't want to have a baby and send it to childcare for someone else to raise. More than anything else in the world, I want to have my own child, and take care of it myself. And I want it NOW, by golly! ;)

"But we have financial obligations," I'd tell myself, and "we'd never be able to get by without my salary". J said we could make it work, but I do the finances in our household, and I knew we couldn't.

And then this weekend we went to a friend's house for their little boy's 1 year birthday party. And I spent all day with parents and little kids and seeing this whole lifestyle that I know I'm meant for. And I came home and realized for the first time just how terribly unhappy I was with certain aspects of my life, and how upset I was with myself for letting so many years go by just making it from one moment to the next without any plan for how to get from where I was to where I wanted to be. Granted, those first few years of desperation were pretty much unavoidable - we both needed jobs in order to eat, so life goals be damned at that point! :) But at some point, even as more money started coming in and we started getting more and more on our feet, we just kept biding time for some future where we'd be able to afford a family or a house or both.

So when we came home and I said for the umpteenth time that I wanted to have kids, when J said, "it's not like we couldn't do it right now, we could make it work," I looked into it. I got out all my budgeting spreadsheets and broke out the calculator and started doing the math. And it turns out, we could do it right now. It wouldn't be easy. There would be sacrifices and there would be risks (I have no idea if my work will be able to find me a position that would enable me to work from home so I could raise a child) but it could feasibly be done. We could, in fact, make it work.

Which brings us to right now! (Phew, just the retelling of the journey was exhausting!) We haven't made any decisions to start a family, but I'm going to start looking into some of the issues that would affect the decision and we'll take it from there. But no matter what, I'm tired of biding my time and waiting for the perfect moment, because (as so many parents have told me whenever I use that as an excuse) there never is a perfect moment. You just somehow find a way to make it work. And I'm starting to put some faith in that concept. I'm tired of treading water and not striving towards what I want, so I'm going to start making some changes in my life, and I want to document it to share with the world! (Because that is my way, I'm just all about sharing like that!)

I blogged for years and always loved doing it, but fell off the wagon when Facebook updates and tweets became all the rage. But if I'm going to do something like this, I'm going to do it right, and I'm going to let everyone be a part of my endeavor to have faith that I can make things work (hahaha for you, you don't even know what you're in for!) Hence the blog title.

The blog title also has a secondary meaning (I felt pretty proud of myself for coming up with a blog title with TWO meanings as I was falling asleep the other night. We'll see if the pride maintains itself over time, or if it is one of those ideas you later realize only sounded good because you were half asleep!) The biggest obstacle we're trying to overcome right now is financial, so I spend a lot of time thinking about how to save and make more money. In just the same way that J and I look for coupons and good values in order to save a few pennies here and there when we go to the grocery store, I figure, why not look into adding advertisements to my blog? They make it easy to do these days, and while I don't expect to be one of the lucky ones who can live off of nothing but their advertising revenue, every penny counts! :) So, while I'm not looking for a salary, I'm eager to see if I can manage to make any kind of money off of this blog while I'm having fun posting to it anyhow. So see, I'm going to try to make that angle work out for me also! (What do you think, should I be pleased with myself still, or was it just a falling asleep idea?)


Regardless of if I'm brilliant or an idiot, I'm off to a start (even if it's not a good one!) So, welcome to the world, new baby blog! You're young and unformed, and frankly, quite boring (nobody wants to admit it, but new babies are generally not attractive and don't do much of interest) but I love you no matter what already, and can't wait to see where this adventure takes us all :)