Okay, okay, so I know that you are just dying to figure out what in the world is going on with us and why oh why we moved to Spain (or, most likely you aren't but let me delude myself with self-importance here, after all, I'm writing a blog - about me, my life, my family - insert eye roll here).
Well, so, here goes. We moved to the Denver Metro Area back in 2003. It has been a great place to live. Denver has SO much going for it. The proximity to many outdoor activities and the mountains, tons of activities for singles, couples and families, a pretty diverse population, an awesome foodie paradise with a thriving medical and recreation marijuana industry - Denverites are spoiled rotten. We've loved being in Denver for (wait for it): four-teen years! We've built our community, our support system, our tribe there. We bought our first home there and had our first -and only- baby there.
We moved to Denver shortly after graduating from college and getting married. We knew a couple of people there and that was it. When we packed our Penske moving truck with all of our earthly possessions, our two cats and a dog and drove off from our apartment in Waukesha, WI, I kept thinking "it's like we are pioneers moving out West, except that it's 2003 and we have a moving truck and not covered wagons". It was, an adventure. I had been in the US for less than 10 years living in a comfy bubble of college life and post-college life in a place that I felt comfortable in and understood. Moving to Denver was a whole new ball game for me. Like all adventures, we had our ups and downs, but we learned so much and grew from it. Can you see where I'm going here....?
I've been itching for the past few years. Looking for jobs around the world. Applying for this and that and praying to the job gods that something comes through.... zip, zilch, nada. And then, I got laid off in the Fall of 2015, started my own business, acquired a kick-ass business partner and focused on that while doing a bunch of side projects and letting my creative juices flow. Slowly but surely, I started floating the idea of selling our house to my spouse and moving somewhere else. A lot of conversations were had, many things discussed and a lot of mulling over took place.
Where would we go? Anywhere. Canada, Costa Rica, and Mexico seemed like good choices because it wouldn't be hard to obtain residency in any of those places. While I love many parts of Canada and do speak some French, I wanted a place where our child would be immersed in Spanish - so that was out. The more research we did on Mexico, the more nervous I got about safety because the very specific part of the country I wanted to move to. It also seemed to familiar. And if Mexico seemed familiar, well, Costa Rica was then clearly out of the question being incredibly familiar - not really an adventure but more an extended stay vacation that would rarely pull us out of our comfort zone. And while the idea of our child being much more knowledgeable about where I grew up and being surrounded by friends and family was extremely appealing, it just didn't feel right.
So now, what? Ecuador? Peru? Argentina? Chile? Colombia? We wanted a place that was new to all of us, that was Spanish-speaking, where I would be happy with the weather most of the time (yeah, humidity and heat are not friends of mine and make me a really cranky person), that would allow us to explore and travel but also be enticing for our friends and family to come visit.... what about.... Spain? Extensive research was done, pros and cons weighed and well - we're in Spain!
Is it totally bonkers to sell your house, pick up and move to a country you have never been too before? Um, you know what the name of this blog is, right?
Don't get me wrong. Our life in Denver was good. It was steady and predictable in the most comforting of ways. I knew what to expect, how to navigate things and where to find anything I needed. And yet, I also had a very high level of anxiety and stress. Our family was in a perpetual state of "fine" and "chugging along". Which, by no means, should be categorized as something negative it just... isn't what we want out of our lives. Life is an amazing journey with so much adventure waiting to happen and we had a choice; we could stay or we could go. We could make things happen or stay complacent.
The poet Seamus Heaney wrote: The way we are living, timorous or bold, will have been our life.
Well, this is us. Being bold.
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