Some Dreams Must Die . . .

Welcome back, I hope you had a happy holiday. The week after Christmas and before the New Year is a time of such contradictions for me. I generally feel a little blue coming down from my Christmas morning high, but also start to plot resolutions (which inevitably involve weight loss and organization) and vow to be better in the year ahead, all the while eating leftover cookies and ham and taking as many naps as possible. This year, though, with the big move looming less than six months away and listing our house in less than three months, there is not much room for error when it comes to getting my act together. But, while I think of the impossibly long to do list ahead of me, I can't help but think of all the paths I can now simply cross of my "maybe someday" list.

When you decide to chase one dream, many others must die. There's just not time in this life to pursue them all. For a long time, before and after kids, I dreamed of going back to culinary school and opening a restaurant. But let's face it, not only is there the cost of school and the huge financial risk in opening a restaurant, running a restaurant is even less conducive to raising a family than being a full-time litigator . So at some point, I made peace with the fact that I'll never be a chef and let that dream go. It didn't feel good, but it felt right.

Buying a house in the country in Vermont is a big dream we're making happen (though some days it starts to feel a bit like a nightmare). Because we're making that dream happen though, we have to let a lot of others die. There are some ideas and dreams that were floating around in my head that I wasn't even fully cognizant of until paid our first Vermont property tax bill and I started labeling boxes "Vermont house." It feels just fine to let some of those dreams go, but some others make me question whether we've chosen the right path. By way of example, the below house.

While this house might make some run in the other direction, I just want to give her a makeover. Now that we're moving to Vermont, we never get to buy this house and turn it into the hip B&B that our neighborhood is so sorely missing. So now, when I walk or drive by this house it gives me a little pain. I wonder if it would have been easier to stay put and just take on a new project right here. Then I have to remind myself, if we had bought this house (and for the record, I don't even know if it's for sale or filled with black mold), we would have had to keep our day jobs in order to pay for our kids' education, the renovations that this place would require, not to mention our own home. That's the thing about dreams though, you don't have to deal with the difficulties that would come if you don't put them into action.

But Vermont is now longer a dream, it's happening - sooner rather than later. I'm betting if I actually start tackling my to do list, I won't even notice all the dreams that leave to find homes elsewhere.

Good luck with your own dreams for 2018.