One Year in North Carolina

It's hard to believe I'm writing this, but tomorrow, Friday, September 12 marks our one year anniversary of moving to North Carolina!

Flying by would probably be an understatement (and ironic because we used to fly SO much more in our California lives). What an absolutely incredible year.

I still feel in many degrees how I described in this post from the holidays last year here in NC - that I feel like being here is equivalent to getting the biggest raise in the world.

Beyond that, I am just amazed in all that can happen in a year. We both moved here without jobs, without a firm plan, and without furniture! Thanks to IKEA and a myriad of other things we've tried, we seem to be on track with all of those things after taking many leaps of faith that they would happen.

I started a real business in October - Greatest Story Creative - and decided to kick fear in the face by going full-time in January! Gus found a great job in November that allowed us to move up to Chapel Hill with friends and has since taken on some epic academic challenges in pursuit of a new career dream.

We got our own place in April, a little one bedroom that we've made cozy while we save for a down payment for a house. This is still a super grown up idea but one we're making progress on. In fact, we hired a buyer's agent this past week to start looking!

Life looks really different than it did a year ago, as we were driving our way across the NC state line into the unknown. It's been an amazing year filled with so much quality time with friends and family, and new friends, and living life with more intention than Gus and I have really ever experienced. It's been a lot more road tripping, a lot more budgeting, and a lot more peaks and valleys, but it's been living!

And we look back on our lives in California with love and respect for the relationships and experiences we got there that have really shaped us. Now that we're on to new adventures, we can really see how those years and dreams were formative and directional for where we are going now and I wouldn't trade them for anything, though we're on new directions and paths today.

And we miss our friends and co-workers there. And for reals, we miss In-N-Out.

Our most recent In-N-Out according to the great historian, Instagram, was exactly 52 weeks ago.

But in all seriousness, milestones like these are a great time to look back and appreciate the past, the present, and the future. And all I have left to say (today anyway) is that I am just so grateful to everyone and everything. Life is awesome.