Year 2010 Part B

Bel always wants to feel reassured that we have a plan forward in our lives. I used to love planning back when I worked with big-pharma, after all at one time during my employment I was a project manager. However, in the last few years I have had such a difficult time making any plan stick, that I’ve almost lost my faith on planning and rather have relied on the trusted “wait and see” approach.

At the end of 2009 Bel was getting tired of my haphazard approach and put some pressure on me to come up with a plan for the next year.

January 1^st came and went and nothing. I begged for an extension and promised to have something concrete by this year’s Chinese New Year. To be honest, even by February 14^th (this year’s Chinese New Year day), I had nothing. But of course I had to pretend that things were becoming clearer and that the “plan” was coming into view. My prediction for 2010: Lots of change.

If I knew then what I know now, I would have been more forceful about my predictions, but suffice it to say that I was right on target with my prediction. For one, in March I started to focus on real estate investments and later on our identification and eventual move to our new home.

Are there any more changes expected for the last quarter of 2010? Other than settling in our new place and getting familiar with our new neighborhood, nothing is firmly on the books, but if it’s like the first half of the year, I’d better embrace myself.

One event that will certainly affect the last 2 months of the year is the expectation that Erick, our youngest son who has lived in Cusco, Peru for almost 5 years, is coming home for a few weeks as he prepares for a new phase of his life. Erick has become quite interested in writing about his experiences in Peru and thus we will be putting a lot of energies into identifying ways to publish his work in some fashion. His visit coincides with the annual Miami International Book Fair on the streets of downtown Miami. We’re hoping to get contacts and ideas at the fair. We are also hoping to be introduced to the new world of publishing which is evolving from the cellulose-based format to the electronic format of eReaders and eTablets. Writing for a living is not a smooth road but as other writers have told me, if you have it in you that you must write, write you must to be able to live with yourself. I’m hoping that the information we acquire during the book fair is more positive than negative and that Erick is encouraged to keep writing into his life plans.

Autumn Travel

I have a love-hate relationship with travel. On the one hand I get all stressed out days before any trip, thinking about all the loose ends that I must take care of before I head to the airport. On the other, during those times I do put in some effort into getting all my “ducks in a row” so it feels good to finally have things organized, at least for a day or two, before the loose ends start untangling again due to my absence from the scene. The sad thing is that I know darn well what works for me when I need to get things organized: making a to-do list. It helps me prioritize and keeps me focused on the task at hand. However, I must love the stress of flying by the seat of my pants, because a list is created only as the very last resort. I keep telling myself that this lesson has been learnt, but I know better.

This trip back to Emerald Isle, NC comes at a perfect time, well, sort of. It comes as I just finished unpacking a few of the last boxes remaining from our recent move to our new home. If I was to stay home I’m sure I could find a thousand things to do. But at this stage, nothing that couldn’t wait another day or two or maybe even a year or two, remains to be put in its new place.

The emotional roller-coaster that begun about 5 months ago with our decision to sell our condo in South Beach, has finally come to a happy conclusion. But it wasn’t a perfectly smooth ride. In May and June we upgraded the condo to prepare it for the sale. We prepared it better than if it was for us to keep it, almost to the point that we had second-thoughts on selling a few times along the way. In July, after weeks of research, I decided on the all-important “asking price”. Was it too high or too low? Would it appraised for that amount if it went into a contract? Were there any buyers out there? There might have been some anxiety at times. However, the stress was short-lived since within 2 weeks we had a signed contract to sell. And as a bonus the buyers did not need the condo until the end of October so they asked us to rent from them for a month or two.

With a contract in hand, the search for our new place ensued full force. We were open for any possible scenario, short of moving out of Miami. We thought about renting another condo for a year, buying what we called a “half-way house”, one that we would manage to live in for a year and then turn it to a rental unit, but the ideal situation was always to find the perfect home, in the perfect place, at the ideal price.

After extensive research and a lot of miles we found THE ONE. And within days we had closed on it. And taking advantage of our rental agreement with our buyers, we went on to do some improvement to the new condo prior to our move. A month later, the first attempt at moving failed. In a way it turned out to be a lucky mishap as we were not quite ready on the receiving end. When it finally happened we were emotionally ready for it and even though not everything was ready, we made it happen. Now, after moving our furniture, boxes, stuff from a storage unit we kept during the selling process, and my computer, which I kept at the realty office also during the move, it is starting to feel like home.

After the move, the unpacking and the travel, the Emerald Isle home is going to feel like a well-deserved vacation. Although I know better as beach-front homes are very demanding and require quite a bit of TLC. So the autumn vacation trip may turn out to be more work just different. Regardless, we’ll get to see friends and family and with the backdrop of the NC beaches, not a bad trade.