Welcome to Utah

It’s kind of funny that we ended up moving to Utah 5 years ago. Ironic, because the entire state has been the punchline of a joke that’s been in my family for years, even before I was born. As the story goes – when my parents were young and crazy (well, they’re still crazy – but when they were young enough to act on their craziness) they made a number of trips camping across the country. In one of these earlier trips, somewhere along the way they got very very lost. They were convinced they were heading in one particular direction, when a sign appeared on the side of the road that let them know they were going in a completely opposite direction of where they were supposed to be. Here is what the sign said:

Welcome to Utah

Since then, the phrase “Welcome to Utah” has been synonmous with the understanding of “You are now officially and completely lost.”

I wouldn’t say our move here was a mistake. From day one – when anyone would ask me how I liked living here my standard answer was always: It works for us… for now. I never had any intention of spending the rest of my life here. And the thought of doing so frightened me. The last year or so, I’d say it’s not been working so much for us anymore, and I’m getting ready to leave. I still don’t know when – it could be as much as another year off – but I’m really feeling like it’s time to go. It’s feeling like it’s time to turn around and find which direction I’m supposed to be going in.

(I had been planning on writing this post today – and it’s pretty funny that I saw this article on the news today about how they’re putting up new/more “Welcome to Utah” signs – supposedly in a bid to increase tourism. Heh)

Utah – land of the never ending winter

If there was ever a day I wanted to move away from Utah more than today, I can’t think of it. It’s May 24th. This is what the morning looked like today:

I’d also like you to remember that the first snow of the season came at the end of September. If you mark that as the beginning of winter and the last snowfall as the end – that make it about 9 months of winter so far. If this year will be the same as last – and we start getting snow in September, that means we only have 3 months to squeeze a spring and summer into. Not cool. At all. I am so done.

Spring Cleaning

The future is still undecided, and we’re only making rough outlines of various possible plans – but at least we’re starting to think about the next steps and starting to move forward. Finally, we’re going to see what other possibilities there are. I have no idea where this road will take us, but I’m excited to find out.

The first step is to prep the house to be sold. We’ve been lugging so much junk with us every time we move – so we’re going to try and trim down as much as possible. I have no idea what to expect as far as how long it will take to sell the house – the market is so weird right now. We were spoiled in the past. The two houses we’ve owned, we were able to sell within a day of putting it on the market. I’m sure that won’t happen a third time (it would be nice – but I’m not delusional). Once the house is sold, we’ll see what happens next.

Control Freak with No Control

A number of years ago, I was stressing about a few particular things going on in my life and a friend of mine gave me this little lecture about trying to focus on the actual things I had control over. He drew a diagram with two circles – one inside the other. The inside circle was me and what I had control over. The outside circle was everything – all the things I was worried about. The area of where the circles overlapped – those represented things I could actually do something about. Anything outside of that were things I had no control over. I think this was taken from a book – discussing “circle of influence / circle of concern”. I of course remember it as “circle of control” because I’m an admitted control freak. So this is what I remember it looking like:

The problem however, is that sometimes in my life, I feel that blue circle in the middle is really really small. And that just about drives me nuts. Makes me depressed. Frustrated. Resentful. Sometimes it seems like what I actually have control over are inconsequential things like – what will we have for dinner. Things that really don’t affect my life on the whole. This is what it feels like right now:

There’s probably disastrous ways to change the shift – but… yeah – they’re disastrous. To shift priorities in my life, I gave up some control of it. It was a choice I made. I don’t regret it. But that doesn’t change the fact that things are not so great right now. I keep trying to dream like I described in my last post but even that has become hard at times. The difficulty is that I need to come up with the idea – and then make other people act on it – as I am not the one in control so I can’t do it myself. THIS is why I am a control freak. Trying to influence people to act on my dream – I’m “nagging” them or “stressing them out”. I just want to move forward.

Why dreaming is important

You have to dream. If you don’t dream you can never learn what it is you want, you can never define your goals. You have to open up your mind to what may seem impossible. You have to be willing to believe that good things can come your way.

The fact of the matter is that most of the time, reality sucks. There’s bills to pay, risks threatening on your every turn. If all you do is focus on reality, you will never move forward. If all you do is focus on the problems that might come up, you will never improve your existence. If you are thrilled with the way things are, then maybe this is okay. Stagnation in itself is not a problem. But if you are not happy, then you have to make change. Life it too short to live it in fear of what might happen, or protecting what you have because you’re afraid to take a risk.

I’m not saying throw caution to the wind and jump off a bridge – but calculated risks need to be taken. I do not believe in a higher power, but that doesn’t stop me from believing that somehow things will work out. Somehow, I’ll find a way to fix the problems that might come up. The reward is worth the risk, and the problems that come up can be dealt with if/when they are a reality.

When you dream, you leave the risks out of the picture, you forget reality, and suddenly you can picture what it is that will make you happy. While you may never acheive that dream to the smallest detail, and things will never be perfect, you need that dream to help define a goal and give you the direction you need to head to.

You also need to continue to dream as you work towards acheiving your goal. By doing so, you allow yourself to adjust your course and fine tune your goal or change directions if you need to. (Sometimes the grass may just seem greener on the other side, and if so, once you start realizing that – change your course).

Because we are human, we are all too aware of the possibility of our own demise. Some completely ignore it – some live in fear of it and by doing so have trouble truly living. There is a happy medium in there somewhere. That is why dreams are so wonderful. Explore the impossible in your dream. Ignore reality just for the moment. You have to know what’s on the other side before you can plot the course to get there.

Faint heart never won fair lady.