All Moved Out...

It is June 1st, 2019 and our tenants move in today. It is definitely a major step forward and a significant moment from a financial perspective with the rent covering the mortgage starting in July.

Moving out has highlighted the emotional roller coaster we are all on individually and as a family unit. For me walking out of the house yesterday felt really great. It looked as great and clean as the day we bought it in 2015. And the 12-day effort to get it ready was done, it was a relief to have a major (perhaps the biggest) piece of transition work complete. For me, the emotion around the house had been a couple of weeks earlier when we had to accept or reject the (early) lease start date of June 1st. We had really wanted July 1st. Once we accepted the rental agreement it flipped over to be a task and away from the emotion of moving us and all our stuff out.

For Whitney, yesterday and the couple of days leading up to it were the hardest. The house was an empty vessel now. All the noise, activity, personal touches (& mess!) was gone.

Scarlett, 6 year old, seems to experience the emotions throughout both my period and Whitney’s, it feels like it weighing on her more than anyone. She analyzes it and absorbs questions from us at home, our friends and family, plus her teachers and classmates at school. I didn’t anticipate the impact the questions at school would have - both positive and negative. Her classmates and teachers are curious and excited for her so they ask questions. That is awesome. Scarlett is in a phase where she doesn’t want to be the focus of attention so I think that is part of the stress and it is compounded when she doesn’t know the answer to some of the questions. Like the question “now that you have moved house (to an AirBnB) what school will you be going to?”. Obviously we are keeping her at the same school for the last month but when she asked us which school she was going to it was clear it had been on her mind. Wish I had anticipated that better.

Nora, 3 year old, doesn’t seem to have experienced much, if any, of the downside. She is seeing us more everyday and Australia Grandma and Grandpa (my parents) are staying with us so she has plenty of playmates.

A huge plus: Moving out 3-4 weeks earlier than we wanted is ultimately going to be a massive positive. It brought forward and compressed the emotional event of moving out of our home and giving away almost all of our stuff. It has also given us the gift of time for our last month in Seattle.

Hope: I am really focused on moving into the daily routine that I aspire to have during our global travels. I hope that when we drive out of Seattle in late June that I look back at the last 2-3 weeks with pride on my family engagement, mindfulness, daily pace, reading, writing and exercise during this period.