reverb13 // At the start: Where did you begin 2013? Give us some background.

I’m just one day late to the reverb game so I’ll play catch up and get my write ON for the month of December!  reverb is a project that my friend Sarah B participates in each year and I always love to read her insightful musings and ocassional intimate discoveries about herself which I totally relate to.  I always find out something new about myself when I write, so I’m thankful to have an outlet and hope that I can stick with it for the month.  And so here goes nothin…

Oh the start.

The place from which all comparisons and measurements begin, and without which there would be no “end”.

I’m not a fan of the start.  It’s the place where there is the most uncertainty because the road ahead isn’t clear.  It helps to have a goal- a defined end– but how you’ll get there… you can’t be quite sure.  I like to have a game plan.  But have found that the more importance you place on the plan the more likely you are to be disappointed with your progress, so I have found myself trying to get to a place where I am comfortable with the unknown.  And I deal with it by trusting in myself, relying on my partner to help us make good decisions along the way, and knowing that in the end it really will just work out.  It always does!

So at the beginning of 2013, January 1st to be exact, we (and by “we” I nearly always mean G and me) were 17 days away from closing on our house, and fretting every second of the day away trying to find this tax return, that bank document, scanning-collating-faxing all this information to the lender, worrying that they would find something wrong with us and deem us unworthy of the loan we needed to buy our dream home.

And on top of all the fret, I was mentally preparing to have that big ole safety net of savings we had just go POOF and it no longer be available for the unlikely catastrophic crisis I am always financially prepared for.  That part bothered me so much more than all of the logistical bank stuff.  Do one thing a day that scares you, right?  Surrendering your savings to invest in something as volatile as real estate is scary in my book.  Scary enough to count for all 365 days, I think.  So I made a deal with myself that if I get through this, and I most certainly would, then I would be done with scary stuff for the whole year.  And it’s only January!

But of course, everything went fine, except for the bank not signing the certified check for a bazillion and a half dollars.  And now we have our dream house.  Not a starter house, or a fixer upper.  Our forever house.  Our home.  A place that I can feel comfortable while I’m working out being OK with the unknown.