The Best Laid Plans

I have found that planning out my goals in four month increments seems to work best for me at this stage of my life.  I break them out into January through April, May through August, and September through December.  I type up my list on pretty paper and check things off once they are completed, usually using a cute sticker to mark my accomplishment. I try to list common items together, because I find it easier to tackle common items together.   I hang my list somewhere that I will see it every day as a visual reminder.  This is a sample shot from a list I put together for last summer.

When I originally drafted my goals for this summer, we weren't planning on moving back to the east coast.  It was something my husband and I had always talked about doing one day.  We traveled back East in May to visit family, and decided that our someday was now.  We started looking at houses and making offers.  We didn't get the houses.  We listed our house in California.  It sold in a weekend.  I put in a transfer with my job. There was no turning back.  We were committed.  My husband was denied his transfer.  Our house was sold.  Time was moving forward, and so were we.  We needed a place to live. Our summer felt like a blur.  It was filled with open houses and staging furniture and sending in documents to our mortgage company.  There were moving boxes and bubble wrap and packing up a Pod until the early hours of the morning.

Here we are at the end of our summer.  My husband traded in his zippy muscle car.  We now have an SUV filled with three dogs, towing a trailer, and driving us across the country.  This is the last picture I will ever take in front of our California house.  We don't live there anymore. Our goals now include closing on a new house, husband finding a new job, and getting all of our stuff across the country as un-broken as possible. In five days we will be there.  Updates will follow.