World Tour

One year and four months ago, almost to the day, my accounting job at one of the nation's top broadcasting and digital media companies moved myself, my husband, our dog, and as many of our worldly possessions as we could afford to ship or fit into a U-haul...to Texas. 

This came as a shock to many for various reasons. (1) Texas is...well, Texas. It's in the middle of the country. There's a lot of dirt and cows and people that say y'all. Granted, we were being moved to Austin which, as any good Texan will tell you, is a blue dot in a sea of red. At least they weren't moving us to Lubbock (sorry, readers from Lubbock!). (2) Very few people from Central Jersey ever leave Central Jersey -- land of unicorns, rainbows, and porkroll. (3) 97% of my family, friends, and people I knew in general lived in the 365-mile, 6-hour stretch of land that bordered the Atlantic Ocean and extended from D.C. to Connecticut.

Husband and I in Austin, TX

Regardless, Husband and I packed up our things, sold our home, said our good-bye's, and became Texans.

I started working in Texas a few weeks a month in April 2017. By August 2017 we were residents. And by January 2018 we knew that Texas was just not going to be the place for us. We loved the city of Austin in general -- the creative restaurants, the walkability, the friendly and outdoorsy vibe, the live country music at literally every bar you went to, and the college-town feel (hook 'em!). Even "Dirty" 6th Street grew on us. But the stress of my demanding job, the heat -- man -- the heat, and the lack of proximity to family really started to set in. We were torn on the decision to leave Austin and to look for living arrangements elsewhere because we had made so many really great friends there in such a short time -- the thought of leaving them was heartbreaking. In our hearts we knew that leaving was ultimately the right decision and that friends would be friends no matter the distance between. In April 2018, I gave my one-month notice at work and by June 2018 we were packed up again, driving across the country, and moving back to the East Coast.

You can take the girl from the ocean, but you can't take the ocean from the girl.

I think I always knew, deep down, that I would need to live by the ocean. Over the years, I stuffed that thought down, pushed it away, sat on it, pretended like it didn't exist, or -- worse -- told myself it was a weakness. Moving to Texas helped me realize that it's just part of who I am and that's ok and definitely not a weakness or something to be ashamed of. Fittingly, after much deliberation on the husband and wife front, Husband and I decided to move to Boston, Massachusetts. Near the ocean? Check. Smaller city with restaurants, museums, and things to do in general? Check. Good job market? Double check. Closer to family? Five hours versus twenty-seven!

View from our bedroom in Revere Beach

I immediately felt at home in Boston.

We moved to a small neighborhood called Revere Beach, which is six T-stops outside of city center. We found an amazing apartment that is on the ocean and close to near-by areas like Cambridge, Gloucester, and even Cape Code and Portsmouth, NH. We assume our family and friends approve of our new location as we've had almost non-stop visitors each weekend since September -- even some of those friends we love so much from Texas! We know the dog approves -- he can't get enough of people watching on the deck and walks on the beach chasing the seagulls. Husband and I were able to find new jobs immediately, which was reassuring and definitely an ego boost. I started in late June 2018 working as a Controller for a distributed elastic SQL database company -- say that five times fast! -- in Cambridge and Husband started in early July 2018 working as a Tax Supervisor for one of the largest accounting firms in the world in Boston's Financial District -- did you catch my proud wife moment, there?

Community Boating on the Charles River

Since we've moved back to Boston, I've been able to get back into sailing through a wonderful organization in Beacon Hill called Community Boating and Husband's been reffing multiple hockey games each weekend. In all fairness, he was able to ref hockey games in Texas, too, but it always seemed so foreign there and often felt, to me at least, just plain wrong. There's something really comical about Southerners watching a hockey game -- 'get the puck y'all!'.

In summation, we're unsure of if Boston is our forever home, but it's a pretty awesome for-now home. We've been able to check a lot of our must-have boxes off through moving to Boston and that's definitely a win in my book.

P.S.: If you're going to keep reading through the older posts, judge lightly. Those were written by a different (and younger) me at a different time -- but they're all-in-all too hilarious to get rid of ;-)