Beating to Windward

For you non-sailors who might read this, sailing towards the direction the wind is blowing from, or "beating to windward", is a lot of work.  Modern sailboats can sail to within a certain angle of the wind, around 45 degrees to either side of where the wind is coming from; so to get upwind you have to go through a series of "tacks" where you change the direction of the boat to either side of the wind to eventually make your way to where you want to go upwind.

That is what the past few weeks have felt like as we prepare for our yard sale, and get the house in order to be shown for sale.  A lot of work.

All of the little fixes that we have been putting off forever now have to get taken care of.  Everything from taping down stair treads, to touch up painting.  Its a good thing that we have pretty much forsaken TV, because we haven't had time to watch it anyway.

What is key here is to keep our dreams in the fore front of our minds.  The easiest thing would be to do nothing, and stay where we are.  We could easily have a nice comfortable life, especially now that the house is finally nearing completion.  But the easy thing isn't always the right thing, or the best thing.

Just a few more tacks...

11 Months Later

It's always amazing to me when you look back in time at how fast it seems to have gone, while the future always seems to to be so far away.

We started this blog almost a year ago to chronicle our journey towards a new life. Unfortunately we haven't made it there yet. The biggest obstacle to overcome has been the sale of our home here in upstate NY. A year ago the real estate market was looking pretty dismal and we decided to step back and regroup before going forward.

When last we blogged, we were determining whether or not to renovate the attic into a functional second floor. Well, we decided it would be best to go forward with the work in order to add more equity. The work began in September and by November of 09 we had a fully functioning second floor. Thus far everyone who has seen it has been very impressed, and we are hoping it will be the edge that helps with the ultimate sale of the house.

The plan now is to list our house for sale on or about May 1st, 2010. That will be the 4 year anniversary of when we bought the house. As always there is a list of projects we would like to complete in order to get everything in tip top shape before the sale. If we can get near our eventual asking price, we will have enough to break free.

It's hard to believe how fast the last year has gone by, and all that we accomplished with this house. In a short few months our lives will be very different, I can't wait to look back a year from now and see what we've done.