On Risk and The Option to Fail

I tend to get reflective this time of the year.

It was 4 years ago this week that I worked my last day as a recruiter in temporary staffing. I took a risk and jumped without a safety net.

It was terrifying.

But here I am today doing the thing I love most in the place I love most and it was all because I was willing to take a risk.

I didn't want to fail, but I knew that if I didn't at least try this, I already had. 

This is what the tiny life has been all about for me. It has never once been about the house. The house was just one very tiny component in my journey. But it was an important one.

See, we had been restless for a while. When we moved to Atlanta in 2003, we continued on the traditional trajectory. We were nearly 30 and we had good jobs, so we did what we thought you were supposed to do. We bought a house. Our house in Atlanta was 2700 square feet and it was a good house. We did all we could to enjoy it fully, often having out of town guests or hosting social events and parties. But that size house also came with some less than pleasant side effects. We had to keep working to pay the mortgage and all of our free time was spent fixing it up. It wasn't making us happy.

And it was the day we accepted that there were other options was the day all of our possibilities opened up.

We started building our tiny in 2009. It took us 3 years and people often comment that building such a small house should have never taken that long. But I know my own truth. I know that those three years weren't just about building a house. They were about a journey of self-discovery. I wouldn't have been ready to quit my job in 2009, but the as the house neared completion it became a symbol of my progression.

I was able to tell myself if I could build a house, I could do anything. 

Today, I write. I am so happy to be able to do what I love every day. Moving into a tiny house wasn't the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal was to change my life in a way that allowed me to live it on my own terms. Now, my time is my own and I am grateful for every step that led me here.

And this isn't it for our adventures. Matt and I are not the settling down types, which was why we built a tiny house to begin with. There is more to come and over the next year, I'll be able to share some details.

It is never about the house.