Moving to Loveland
Early this year, during a rare moment of free time, I asked Nick what it would take to ease some of the stress in his life and make him feel more happy and energized. This after several years of seemingly unchangeable anxiety and depression. (Stop. I know anxiety and depression may require clinical/therapeutic treatments, and we have pursued those as well. This was a conversation about what WE could do.) The two main sources of stress he identified were his job, and our house. Does this livejournal even know about our house? We lived in a 100+ year old house that we rehabbed into liveable conditions and were slowly improving over time. We decided during that conversation that we would move, and then re-evaluate the job situation. We listed our house after a mad 8 weeks of preparation.
Late in July, our family moved from Brighton to Loveland.
When we listed the house, I started an inside joke with myself that I would do all kinds of responsible, adult things when we moved such as "get what we actually need from the grocery store in a single weekly trip," "regularly make our bed," "keep the house reasonably tidy," "cook meals sometimes," and "put Desdemona in pajamas at night instead of just letting her sleep in whatever she wore that day." I honestly didn't expect that moving would have a drastic enough effect on my lifestyle, and thought most of these goals were more like daydreams.
But actually, I underestimated how draining it is to be alone in a town with a young family. Since moving, I have consistently done all of those things and more, and it hasn't even felt difficult to adjust. I have more time for myself, more energy to put into my marriage, and more patience with Desdemona. It's truly remarkable how different I feel just because my family is a 5-minute drive away, instead of 45. We still have no close friends nearby, but that seems like something we can work to change. And the fact that everything in our house WORKS, with no tricks or special techniques required, freed up a lot more headspace than I anticipated.
Anyway, there's that.