I found out recently that I will be going back to CA for a business trip. While my wife has been back there a few times (alone and with the kids), I have not been back there since our vacation back in April. And while there we spent most our time as tourists — I did not get a lot of opportunity to mirror my past life there going to work, seeing acquaintances and friends and generally moving around in familiar territory. So this trip will be very weird for me. And with no immediate relatives in the area (my folks left a few months ago and my sister and her family vacated a couple months before us) it won’t be the anchor it once was. It ceased being “home” quite a while ago but going there, seeing the many familiar surroundings and paralleling many of the habits that were once my every day life (drives to work, meals at favorite places, etc) will be very surreal.
While planning this short business trip, I sometimes throw my mind back to the original decision formula of what made us leave. I play that arithmetic decision making through again, reprocessing as a double check to see if I’ve done the right thing for my family. What have we gained? What have we lost? I am not second guessing our move decision at all. I am merely using it as an anchor to ensure that we haven’t strayed from our path. Sometimes in our everyday course of life, we get distracted by the petty details and temporary wants. We need to remain focused on the long term goals that provide a deeper satisfaction for each of us.
I can tell you that I’d be lieing if I said that I wasn’t envious of the 80F degree day a friend said they had in CA. I told him he sucked.
…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net
