get the lead out - part IX

If you don’t live in the south, you may be unaware that we are flooding. Well, that’s dramatic. Most of the flooding we’re experiencing is the result of overwhelmed storm drains. Once the rain slows a bit, it has time to catch up. It has served, however, to cancel most of my weekend plans, including a six week fitness boot camp I signed up for and today’s plans to weed my garden, the first step in my backyard fall preparations, which I’ll probably write about at some later point. Every time I try to weed, it begins to rain. I also discover that mosquitoes do NOT mind the rain. One day I’m going to accept that I’m highly reactive to mosquito bites, and I’m going to find something stronger than Cutter Skinsations to repel them. It seems nice. It smells nice to me, a girl. It moisturizes with Aloe and Vitamin E. It just doesn’t work.
So indoor boredom has brought me to the computer, and back to my main story.
I’ve gotten some interesting responses to the plan I shared in part VIII. Most of them involve some shade of You want to do this now? Are you insane?
The answer, of course, is no. I guess some are under the impression that stores magically open, fully evolved, from fairy dust.
I do think, however, that the best time to plan is when times are bad, so I can take advantage of improving economic conditions when they happen. And the declining economy has helped focus me, forcing me to divide my task into chunks I can manage more easily. Because I am impatient to move forward, it has helped me focus on what I can do NOW.
When I first entertained this idea, I was ready to relocate and open the store simultaneously. And that seemed like such a big job, it would keep me awake nights. I finally came to understand something. I have lots to do before I can start a store. So I don’t need to delay those things because the store remains a few years away. I also don’t need to delay a move.
But I will tell you, I realized this about a year ago. So, what has prevented me from calling a mover and loading up Pearly Lee and the dogs? When I last lived in Colorado, I was a student in Boulder. Some have asked if this goal to move is just a wish to relive the past. It’s a fair question, posed by people who don’t have all the facts.
In school, I worked full time and was still behind financially. I did lots of creative financing, and with credit card applications on every bulletin board, it wasn’t difficult to accumulate four or five. It didn’t seem foolish at the time, because other friends had them. However, where other friends were using them for skiing or camping equipment, I was paying for tuition and books, and getting seriously in debt. I remember how my mother once ordered a cake to be delivered to me on my birthday while I lived in the dorm. I worked in that dorm cafeteria. So I ended up cleaning the bowls they used to make it, standing in a yellow tiled kitchen with the window open, because even across campus, we could hear the sound of the crowd cheering while the Buffs played a football game.
When I graduated, my dad spent a lot of time and made a lot of phone calls, negotiating and berating creditors. With lots of resistance and very little assistance from me, he got my credit cleaned up. I was operating on autopilot, however. I made more than I spent because I didn’t spend that much, and that was fine. I didn’t have kids, I didn’t have expensive tastes, and if I wanted something big, I would put some money aside or put it on a credit card. I wasn’t really prepared for emergencies, but I hadn’t had too many emergencies, so I felt like I had a reasonable handle on things. But when I began assessing my situation, when I faced the prospect of changing the direction my path was taking, memories similar to that cake memory weighed heavily on my mind. Truthfully, I didn’t have much of a handle on things at all.
Do I want to move? Absolutely, I always have. I want to return, in part, because of the experiences I had while I was there. I enjoyed my surroundings – the low humidity, the changing seasons, the geography, the quality of life there. But I don’t yearn for a past I lost. I yearn to live in Colorado the way I should have the first time. I don’t want to return if I can’t do that. I’m older now, and time is nothing to fritter away. And I don’t want to be so bogged down with my financial burdens that I can’t enjoy a glass of wine in a field of flowers or be a part of a satisfying new adventure discovering a grove of aspen trees. And once I get there, I will decide if my idea of a satisfying adventure is a weekend at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, or using a camping stove to heat up Spaghetti-Os. I’ll be honest. I think I want to do both.
And that is a perspective-changing realization. Back in October ’08, I had two debts, not including my house, and no real aspirations beyond a middle class routine where you “always have a debt.” But to move, and to do it successfully without creating more debt in the process, to start a business, to take care of myself by myself, I have to do things differently.
It’s now almost a year later. I have retired one debt. It will take a month longer than I hoped, but my payoff date for BOTH debts is November 20th. I joked with a friend of mine that I’ve become an expert in writing amortization schedules, to make sure I’m staying on track. At the beginning of the year, I promised I would not renew my driver’s license this year, that’d I’d be moving by October. I won’t be able to keep that promise, and I have been feeling defeated by that. But with a plan in place to rent my house, and with a debt off less than a few hundred dollars, I may not be moving in October, but I will be ready to look for a job in November.
Among other things. More on that later.
--Laura