I am a bad ass!

May 8, 2015

Leigh, a friend of mine in Fort Collins, introduced me to Jen Sincero's book "You are a Bad Ass".

Jen Sincero talks a lot about making big changes in your life, moving from a safe but uninspired life to follow your dream and do your own bad ass thing. One of her ideas is that when you are making these kinds of changes, the Universe tends to throw out challenges to test how serious you are. I'm not necessarily recommending this book, but this one idea resonated with me.

I think that leaving my comfortable job and moving back to the Springs with the idea of a big adventure constitutes the sort of change she is talking about. The details have been, quite frankly, really challenging. Cutting my lease short in Fort Collins, conveniently coincident with the end of my tenant's lease in Colorado Springs, arranging movers, packing. Choosing post-employment health insurance. Making sure my home insurance is untangled from the renter/rentee situation, and sorting out how best to handle my car insurance while not owning a car (see below!). Taking money from my non-qualified retirement savings to buy a rental property in order to create at least a small income stream. And completing that real estate transaction. And getting a tenant. Yes, first world problems.

And there have been some exceptional challenges!

A few days following my last day at work, my car was rear-ended at a traffic light. As an 18 year old car, it didn't have much value and the insurance company declared it a total loss. Fortunately, no one was hurt.

Does it look totaled? Good thing the bike rack was empty!

I didn't want to buy a car before leaving on this trip so I've become, at least temporarily, car-free.

As I write this, it is pouring rain. It has been raining steadily for a week. The exception was yesterday, when the rain turned to hail. We had 8 inches of hail! The city sent out the snow plows. The hail shut down the interstate through town.

Hail, May 7, 2015. Acknowledgement: I didn't take this picture. I copied it from the KRDO website.

This is Colorado! We don't get this much rain! This is not a great introduction to being car-free. Somehow that metal box that separates me from the environment while moving from place to place seems really attractive right now.

Next challenge: My home in Colorado Springs needed to have the carpets re-cleaned. When the carpet cleaning company hooked up to the water spigot outside, the kitchen flooded. The tenant had, apparently, left a hose hooked up over the winter and the pipes froze and burst.

I had a plumber in to fix the leak. Not unexpectedly, he left me with a hole in the wall to fix.

I think I'll leave the challenge list at that, as I'd rather not dwell on it any more. I'd just like to say that, if anything, I'm even more anxious and excited about the upcoming trip!

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