It’s an easy concept right?

So why isn’t it that simple?

As I think about the things that make me happiest in the world, these things come to mind . . . . .

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My husband

My kids

Extended family members

Good friends

Cruises

Being at the beach

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I’m really am fortunate to have a wonderful husband and a good marriage.

I have some pretty awesome kids (most of the time).

We have extended family members who are there for us when needed.

We’ve made some awesome friends over the years.

We have been able to take some fun cruises and have more booked.

We were at the beach for vacation last summer and are going back this summer.

There is also beach time during our cruise shore excursions.

However, time at the beach is something I long to have more of in my life.  It’s something my family longs to have more of in our lives.

Living in Texas means we aren’t THAT far from the beach, but it’s still a several hour drive to get there and my favorite beaches are in Florida and the Caribbean.

Life is short and getting shorter every day.  So if being at the beach makes me and my family so happy, why don’t we live closer?  For a matter-of-fact, why do we hesitate to make the changes necessary to do things that we know make us happy?

I have many people in my life that would rather live somewhere else, but they stay where they are.   Why?

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They live close to where they work and money certainly makes living life easier.

They have family in the area and don’t want to leave them.

They don’t want to go thru the hassle of selling their house.

They are fearful of change.

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The list of reasons are long and many have very good reasons for wanting to stay where they are, even if they aren’t completely happy.  Many of those reasons are the reasons we hesitate as well.

However, I don’t want to spend my life living somewhere that doesn’t make me truly happy and we’re fortunate to have choices.

We have experienced things in life that we know bring us happiness and enjoyment in life, so why not strive to make the changes that will allow us to regularly enjoy the life we want to live?  Isn’t that living our authentic life?

Recently, hubby was interviewed for a new position in his company.  The interview went very well and he was told he was going to be offered the position.  Upper management decided to make some changes regarding the job classification and unless he was willing to take a step backwards, they could no longer offer him the job.  It’s hard to get excited about a new opportunity only to discover it’s not going to be an option.  However, the experiences caused us to step back and look at the bigger picture.

In this particular instance, the job change would have required us to make another move back to the Pacific Northwest.  We weren’t opposed to making the move because we knew from living there previously, that we liked living there.  However, we realized it wasn’t somewhere we wanted to live for the rest of our lives, so it would have been a temporary move for us or we would have been forced to stay there longer than we may have wanted.  So thru the disappointment of hubby not being able to move his career forward like we thought, we realized that it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.  Instead of putting our focus on making a temporary move, we can focus on doing something that will make us happy.

For the short-term, we will focus on ANW’s adoption and we will make some changes to our home.  Hopefully within the next 1-2 years, we will relocate to an area that we so very much enjoy – the Tampa Bay area in Florida near Clearwater Beach, which is listed as the #1 Beach in the U.S.

Although we vacation at Indian Rocks Beach, a few miles south of Clearwater Beach, we are in our happy place there and it will be a great location for us to one day retire, so why not make the move before retirement and begin enjoying the beach life.

So we’ll set our sites on making that move in the future with no detours, because we should do what makes us happy.