Work or play.
Hot or cold.
Take a stand or take a backseat.
Answer the phone or let it go to voicemail.
Lately my biggest internal struggle is where our lives are going to go in the near and distant future. Growing up, I was always certain that I would stay in SLO, go to college, raise my family and grow old there. I lived there for the first twenty-two years of my life and it will always be home!
Moving down to Camarillo was a HUGE move for me. I was ready for a change of scenery, needed to break out of a cycle I was in, and I was ready to spread my wings a little bit. The hardest part was leaving Mom and Dad and the comforts of knowing my hometown and feeling confident that I knew where everything was. My first few months down here, I was back home every weekend enjoying the security of people and things I knew, because going to a relatively new school there just wasn't much going on.
Now that we are married and planning our future, it is becoming harder and harder to be so far away from my parents and the city I always dreamed of living in with my own family. I know that far away is a relative term. I am only little more than a two hour car ride away not in different continents or time zones, but sometimes it feels that far. I am so very thankful for the phone calls, texts, and emails we share on an almost daily basis to keep us close.
I have the best relationship with Mom and Dad and I have been told by some of my friends that they are jealous of the friendship we have. I am one of the lucky ones: we never had any big arguments or rebellions growing up (that I can remember anyway), I always knew that I could go to them with anything and they would listen (and still do), and we trusted each other.
Towards the end of my schooling down here, I had many friends which made it easier to be away from home. But, as people do, they moved away and I stayed, so now my friends are scattered all around the state and some of my closest friends live anywhere from one to eight hours away! Having the work schedule that I do makes it difficult getting together with my friends that live close and it seems that more and more of my friends are back living near SLO.
With the frustrations that we are having with finding a home to call our own, moving closer to SLO is becoming more and more appealing. I always thought that SLO County was outrageously expensive, but the homes that we are finding down here are not any cheaper that those we would find in SLO County (and I've been looking around a bit).
The only major "thing" hampering our home search up there is the fact that it would make my commute over two hours each way but right now Chris' commute is about an hour and a half each way. Santa Barbara would be in the middle of our two jobs and a great location, except for the fact that it is outrageously overpriced! It's not that we even want to live in SB, it is just a good middle ground between our two jobs and families, so even looking for a home there is out of the question. The surrounding areas are just as overpriced because the people who can't afford to live in SB, live in those areas increasing their prices.
So for now...the search continues, trying to find the right place (or finding a place to make the right place) continues, and trying to decide what is best for our family continues...
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