It didn’t go well. One thing I learned very quickly is that I am not rigged to live alone – I hated it! I was working as a software test engineer and that was not a good fit either, turns out I don’t like computer programming or writing test procedures (I could have told you that back in college). I hated sitting trapped in the office for 40 hours a week, with no windows and unfortunately not very much work to do. I was miserable! I made it four days in my new apartment and then moved back to Colorado Springs and commuted an hour to and an hour home from work every day for the next year and a half. That helped me survive but life was still really hard. I was having anxiety attacks, not eating, not sleeping and ended up going through some counseling and getting anti-anxiety/anti-depression medication.
The job and living situation were definitely factors but I was also working through a lot personally. I was struggling with what independence meant/felt like and how to have the confidence to make my own decisions. On top of all of it Logan and I were still doing the long-distance relationship thing – he was living in Nashville and touring the majority of the time. It was definitely coming to the point where we needed to change something about that dynamic but it wasn’t totally obvious how that made sense. Basically there were pretty much zero engineering opportunities in Nashville and the Christian music industry wasn’t exactly based in Colorado.
Eventually Logan came to the decision that travelling so much on tour wasn’t the kind of family life he wanted down the road and he ended up deciding to move back to Colorado in April 2004 – finally after 2 ½ years of dating we actually lived in the same city! Logan was working at Starbucks and we started pursuing moving to Seattle since it seemed like a fun place to live and offered career opportunities for both of us. Sadly all we met were closed doors and it seemed that Seattle wasn’t God’s plan for us.
(visiting Seattle)
Logan and I got engaged July 3rd and started planning the wedding. In October I finally got an offer for a job transfer down to Colorado Springs and for a job that turned out to be a good fit! Things were starting to fall into place :)
(top of the mountain where we got engaged in Breckenridge)
On a very snowy November 28 Logan and I got married in what turned out to be a very quick ceremony and reception thanks to an oncoming blizzard!
The transition to married life was actually really easy. Logan and I had laid a strong foundation thanks to our hours upon hours upon hours of phone conversations and we were both still so happy to be living in the same place. On the job front, though, we both continued to struggle with finding something really fulfilling. Logan made a number of job changes and some held great promise others were just something to do while figuring out the next step but nothing ever really seemed to “click”. There was even a period where he ended up on anti-anxiety medication just to cope with life. I was enjoying what I was doing but still wasn’t anywhere close to that “this my passion and what God created me to do” sort of feeling. Life was just meandering along, we travelled some, camped some and overall it was pretty uneventful.
(Maui)
The summer of 2005 we bought our first house and two black labs, Bear and Dakota
Then we decided it was time to have kids and that is where this blog picks up the story :) ….
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment