Disappointed

I’m pretty disappointed, but we’re not going to move on to our next location yet. We had been hoping to get closer to family, into a less harsh climate, and into less-stressful jobs. But John’s not ready yet to get a new job.

For me it would have been the perfect timing. We had already decided to sell the house in Placitas this spring, so we have to move anyway. John is retirement eligible next month, so in theory he could start that up and go work somewhere else, and have both incomes. Management changes at my job have largely removed my ability to develop programs as I had been, so I don’t feel like I have a meaningful role anymore, and am ready to find a new job. Everything seemed lined up.

Except for John’s job. He is in midst of a project that he is enjoying, even though it is very stressful and requiring way too much overtime. He’s worked at his same company his whole life, and although he’s changed jobs within his company before, he’s never worked elsewhere. We’re concerned that a new job might mean giving up some of the perks he’s earned for being there so many years, such as a lot of time off. So a job hunt is more daunting for him than it is for me. Also his career is more specialized, whereas I am a generalist in my field and can fairly easily find a job pretty much anywhere.

I’m very concerned that if he stays with this same job he will continue to work ridiculously long hours, which is really taking a toll on us. But he’s promising that he will be cutting back. He says he’s training a new early-career coworker, and soon that coworker will be able to take over some of what John is currently doing. John says then he will be able to drop to part-time. That would be wonderful, although I’ll believe it when I see it. At the moment I’d be ecstatic to just have him working a regular 40-hr week without all the travel.

So the plan is we’re going to stay in Albuquerque for a little while longer before getting moved to the next location. It’s hard on me because I’m not sure what I’m going to do with myself for a year or two or three, without ending up feeling like I’m just waiting to move again. We do still intend to move out of the area. Just not yet. It’s discouraging to have to move while knowing it’s temporary and we’ll have to move a second time fairly soon. I totally hate moving (who doesn’t?). Moving is so much work and we move so often. I wish we were ready to settle down somewhere. But maybe I can think of the time as an enjoyable phase and not just a waiting period.

We’re going to go ahead and get a house in Albuquerque near where we lived before moving to California. The one we’re making an offer on is a comfortable house, and doesn’t need much work. It’s not our dream house. It doesn’t have a swimming pool or a workshop for John, or anything special we were hoping to have eventually. But we want to keep our budget down and buy something that will be easy to sell later.

We are not going to stay living in the Placitas house because we are at our wits end with that house. Plus, it’s a very difficult house to sell, and we feel like we need to get it sold while the market is strong. We’ve tried and failed to sell it two or three times in the past 12 years. We really just need to get it sold.

The house we’re looking at in Albuquerque is much more practical of a house, in town, and costs much less money, and would sell much more easily than the one in Placitas, even if the market softens in a couple of years. The new house in Albuquerque will be fine; the house is not the problem. I think we’ll be comfortable there. The difficulty for me is not being able to get started on what I had imagined was going to be our big new phase in life. Instead, I’ve got to figure out how to create a shorter, temporary new phase, and avoid the trap of feeling like I’m just waiting to move again.