Living the dream---- for my husband Michael and I this means beginning the adventure of a life time by moving to Venice, Italy. This blog will contain the story of our progress on that journey to find our new life in a new exciting place.
I hope you will bear with me. I want to turn back time a little bit so I can capture the entire journey, right from the very start, even though some time has now passed. I regret not starting this blog back then. But, as the saying goes, no time like the present. So, with no further ado, here goes .....
Being with my father for the last few days of his life in January 2005 made a profound impact on my own. One thing became so clear to me-- I could not squander the rest of my life doing things that did not give me immense joy any longer. Who knows how much longer there is left? Every day is such a gift, I need to be treating it exactly like that. No more going through the days, ticking off time, with no purpose. I had to find what brings me joy, and make that my focus. That was a turning point. I still didn't know what that would mean, but I clearly knew it meant something of profound importance. For all practical purposes, the journey starts right there.
The next step in this journey we ( my husband Michael and I) took was to spend 3 weeks in a rented apartment in Venice, Italy. We'd been to Venice twice before in the previous 2 years. The first time, Venice was the jumping off point of a 21 day "grand tour" of Italy. Wanting to get to know Venice alittle better, we returned a second time the following year for 12 days, staying in a quaint little inn right behind St. Marks Place. For this next trip, we wanted to get still closer to Venice. This called for renting an apartment so we could go to the markets each day and cook for ourselves. We chose a 2 bedroom apartment in Castello ( one of the 6 sestiere's of Venice ) not far from St. Marks. We filled 3 weeks with walks to the Rialto market, cooking with the fresh ingredients we found in the markets each day, and exploring canals and campos. We already knew that we enjoyed every bit of Venice. What we didn't realize just yet was that Venice had stolen our hearts.
Shortly after returning back home to Baltimore after that trip, I remember turning to Michael one day and asking him if he thought he could possibly live in Venice, because that was what I knew I wanted to do. This wasn't just a wild-assed thing I dreamt up. This was real. I had no idea how I was going to do this, but I knew I had to try - and not just a feeble effort. One of my weaknesses in life is that when I hit a brick wall, I tend to turn around . This time, I knew there would be a brick wall, maybe several---and I didn't want to let my fears cause me to turn around. Michael was as smitten with Venice as I was... and gave me the green light to pursue whatever I wanted.
I made a bold move -- I hired a life coach. I wanted , no -- I needed someone to guide me up and over all the brick walls I would encounter along the way as I proceeded on this journey. My new life coach helped me devise a plan- my road map for getting to Venice. There were lots of question marks I needed to answer, lots of holes in the drafts of the plan I worked on, but before long I had a plan that felt right for us.
So that's where all this began. Next time I'll continue with the steps we've accomplished so far and where we are in the plan to date.
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