#newbeginnings
I decided to do something I never would have considered only a few years ago. After 10+ years living in the Twin Cities metro area, I moved my family—husband, 2-year-old, and 8-month-old, to a rural area and into the small city of Ely, MN, located near the border of Canada, surrounded by acres of national forest. And of course, cause I don’t like anything to be too easy, I moved in the dead of winter. I was offered an opportunity in a new location, and I was not going to let the time of year stop me from taking it.
Moving is never fun, but it rises to a whole new level of hard in the middle of winter in northern Minnesota with two very small children. My husband and I found ourselves contending with blizzard-like conditions and moving belongings in the snow while wrangling a very curious, newly-mobile infant and an energetic toddler. To make matters worse, on one of the first trips during the move, my car hit black ice and swerved into a guardrail. Luckily, everyone was physically ok, but the car was totaled and my mental health took a nosedive as I suddenly took the accident as some sort of bad omen or even punishment for daring to try something outside of my former trajectory.
It’s been a couple of months since the accident. We are fully moved into our new home and things have settled down considerably. I am in a much better headspace. And I continue to remind myself that there were concrete reasons that I wanted to move. I wanted to slow down, find community in a smaller place, and hopefully find renewed inspiration and time to continue my professional and creative practice. That fact that I am even writing a blog post shows a marked improvement to lack of creative output that I have been dealing with for the past couple of years.
To be fair, I had two kids within two years while working full-time and that has the potential to slow anyone down. But, I still have the drive to start my own business and to pursue more creative projects. And this is me doing just that. Slowly and with baby steps, but moving forward nonetheless. And I have goals that I would like to keep in mind as I continue on this journey:
Goals and DreamS and STUFF LIKE THAT
Record by progress through blogging (also get better at writing!)
Integrate art into the everyday, even if it’s in small bits.
Continue to build my marketing and creative business so I can create the longterm career I have always longed for.
Find a work/life balance that allows me to pursue my career goals while giving me time to enjoy time with my family.
See? That’s not so hard to do, right? Right?!