That's awesome, but why?
Janis and I are still very private about our plan to move to Spain. One of the main reasons we have for keeping this news to ourselves is to save time and energy by not having to repeat the "story" of our progress or manage others' expectations.
We don't want to get side tracked with having to tell the same progress report to multiple people for the next few months. We are nervous enough. We decided we'd rather work on making progress than report the progress.
We still want to share our experience with those we love, though. That's part of the reason for writing this blog. When people finally find out about our plans, we can point them in the direction of this blog and they can read about our journey on their own time.
This has been an easy way to capture our experience as it happens and we can see it as a tool to share the backstory with people in the future. And, as some of our relatives already know, it is a great way to keep in touch with them after we move. We've already had two requests from family members to create a blog, so I guess we've already got two unofficial blog followers. :-)
Another great reason this blog will be around is to help others. We love helping people so this is a way we will be able to share what we've learned with others easily.
Having said all this, we just ran into a friend this past weekend. We hadn't seen him in a while. We mentioned Spain to a him. Inevitably, but not surprisingly, he asked us this question, "Why?"
Janis and I responded at about the same time, Janis: "Why not?" Me: "Boredom." In other words, we don't really have a great big reason to do this.
But if we sit and think about it long enough, we remember that this IS something we have both wanted to do for years. We figured we would do it in a few years, you know, after the kid was out of the house.
But after our down sizing experiment of 2016, we found our son was up for a new adventure, too. His serious consideration of this move changed its timeline from "in a few years" to "as soon as possible".
Here are some other reasons to make this move now:
- Nick likes soccer and wants to play. Soccer in Europe > Soccer in US
- Immersing Nick in a different culture will offer him a different perspective
- I love languages. Bilingual Barcelona > Monolingual US
- Janis wants to move her business practice from local to global
- We'd rather not have cars, if possible. Subway/bus/train in Spain > Crappy bus system in US
- There's only so much you can carry on a plane, so we'll have to live more minimally, aka focus more on experiences, dreams, and people rather than material things
But mainly, we are making this move because we can.
And, hey, this might be a mistake. If so, well, we'll move back, lick our wounds and move on. Not too bad for a worst case scenario. And we've decided as a family that not going would give us a lifetime of regret. We don't want that.
And that's a good enough reason for us to make this move right now.