5. awaiting retirement

Clearly we couldn't move anywhere until retirement, because we were settled! We have lived in our home since we got married 14 years ago, we both have good jobs, and we have "roots" in the midwest (MN/WI). It would be crazy to pick up everything and leave!

And yet we still shared this vision for our future. We would idly chat about when and how we could afford to take a trip out west again.  We wistfully thought about how amazing it would be to live within driving distance of "our" beloved Glacier NP. We daydreamed about leaving the hub-bub of a major metropolitan area. We both fondly recalled our upbringings in smaller towns. We wondered what it would be like to have a slower pace of life, with much easier access to the outdoors, maybe even with some chickens in our backyard.

We even sat down one day and compared  our visions of where it would be "ideal" to live. Amazingly, we had each come up with almost the same mental maps:

centered on the Northern Rockies (of the US), taking out SLC and Denver

I decided to sign up for updates on government jobs that could open in that area (i.e., WA, ID, MT, WY, OR, or CO). Sometimes when I was bored I would search for jobs in my field on websites like indeed.com. But mostly Husband and I just kept up with our usual routines, continuing to live our regular lives every day.

Looking back, we both identify the 2016 election as the thing that pushed us over the edge:  If the world was going to go to hell in a hand basket, we figured, we might as well be living our lives to the fullest in the meantime.

So we had some heart to hearts. Did we really want to do this? If we shared this dream, why were we going to wait 30 years or so until retirement? Did we want to model living boldly to Kid or not?!

That's when the search started in earnest. Given the type of work that I do, we figured it would take a good 3-5 years for our  "go West" plans to come to fruition. But 3-5 years was definitely better than 30 years, particularly if we were actively working towad our dream. By the end of November/beginning of December (2016), we were actively embracing a new vision for our future!