Hey y’all, Happy New Year! I was looking back at the blog and realized I haven’t posted since July. That month was pretty crazy for us - we sold our house unexpectedly, moved downtown, and started an entirely new path than what we had planned for ourselves earlier that year. Since July, I’ve been thinking a lot about what the decision to sell our house has led us to, along with the decisions that followed. Almost 6 months later, I can look back and know it was absolutely the right call, but having the faith in the moment of making it was the challenge. We were going against what we knew, carving a different path than what the world around us was promoting, and jumping into a big unknown.

When we took the above pictures, we had just moved and I was questioning a lot. What had we done? Did we overreact in selling? How does this fit into the “plan” we had when buying our house and thinking life would go a certain way? How is this going to change the future and our timeline? If only I could tell my previous self what she’s up to now.

Growing up I was always led to believe that you went to school, met a boy, graduated, got a job, got engaged, bought a house, got married, started having kids, and maybe a dog or two in between. A lot of people around me started living that life and there is nothing wrong with it. Some people did the order a bit differently or started earlier than others, but that was the way things went.

In middle school, I read the book To Kill a Mockingbird, and to this day it is one of my favorite books. The sequel Go Set a Watchman explores the versions of people we see when we grow up and aren’t viewing them through the lens we have as children where we idolize our parents or think every adult has life figured out. After reading Go Set a Watchman, I realized that every kid probably goes through something similar and that the same can be said for the life we build ourselves.

The picturesque, “American Dream” lifestyle of a house, kids, a good job and a dog in the backyard is a beautiful sentiment and something that a lot of people want out of life, myself included. But life isn’t that simple for a lot of us. Even those who appear to have the life we’ve all been told to chase have setbacks, challenges, and hardships. We all struggle with comparison and jealousy at some level. But what many fail to remember is that we aren’t all meant to have the same life and furthermore, we shouldn’t be ashamed for living a life that doesn’t fit the mold of what others are doing.

This year, Kollin and I got some news about the first home we built together and we decided to sell. After years of living in apartments, moving several times, and finally getting the dream of owning a home, we realized something. We weren’t sad about it… everyone in our life felt so bad for us and wondered how devastated we were. Sure, we didn’t want to move or have to sell the house, but we felt a little strange about being so okay with it. But then we realized something. Owning a home is hard. It’s expensive and time-consuming. Growing up, that was the goal. Own something, make it yours, and build your family and wealth. When we got into the house we were really happy there and loved owning something, but as the months went on we realized we weren’t spending a ton of time there, the responsibility of everything was a lot and it wasn’t as amazing as everyone made it seem. The world around us romanticizes all of these life steps and doesn’t talk about how difficult things can be or the not-so-pretty side of things.

Yes, I’m proud of us and grateful for being able to buy a home and go through that process, but I’m more proud of us for making a change and living the life we want rather than the life that is expected of us.

What if the version of your story is that you go to school and end up not loving the career you picked for yourself or maybe “met a boy” turned into “met a girl"? What if you got married and had a great few years, but then things changed and you’re back to dating? What if you’re struggling with infertility or have decided kids aren’t the right choice for your family? What if you prefer renting over owning or you’d rather live in a van and travel the world than have roots in one place?

We all experience things differently and we’re all dealt a different hand in life, but without those unique and personal experiences, we aren’t who we are. So think about where you are in life right now and know that is where you’re supposed to be. Choose the life you want instead of building a life off of others’ expectations of you. Normalize living outside society’s path of what is next and figure out what makes you happy.

I wish I could tell the girl back in April who got the news about the new home she just built that everything would work out and this is actually meant to be. That one decision to sell completely changed the trajectory of what our life would look like. We’d move downtown, save money, end up living .5 miles from a new job that is everything I was looking for in my career. We’d create more opportunities for travel, spend more quality time with friends and family, and learn the importance of want vs. need again. We learned to prioritize certain desires and really focus inward on goals we set for ourselves rather than the goals the outside world is creating for us.

So, the girl in the above photos was scared. Scared of the decisions she’d just made, scared to make the leap in looking for a new job, scared that she was now behind in the timeline she planned for herself, and scared that everything would be different. The best part is that everything is different. It was still scary at times, there were still questions, but I challenged myself in ways I hadn’t before and made it through what was a huge setback to the world around us. That fear can and does still set in sometimes, but now I know I always have a choice in front of me and that it will work out how it is intended to. I suppose if we’re not leading a life that scares us a little, we may not be living at all.