Says WHO?

When I was a kid, I never slept in. I think it was because I didn't wanna miss anything. From the moment I opened my eyes I didn't see any point in staying in bed one second longer. Flash forward 57 years and I'm the same way. Still jumping out of bed like something's on fire. I believe it has served me well over the years, but also cost me a few hours of sleep. When asked about it I always respond with something like "World Domination, Baby!". But the fact is I just like to get up, get going and enjoy every second of this life afforded to me. I think I get this trait from my mom. She's an early riser as well, a book or a puzzle and a cup of coffee, getting the jump on the day and wishing everybody on Facebook a happy birthday. Some of you reading this know that she's the first one to comment on your birthday. And if you're lucky, you are the recipient of one of her famous handmade Christmas stockings. I'm sitting here on the couch staying warm with a quilt she made me by hand. The quilt does its job, but I think the underlying reason behind her making them is to get us to think about her when we use it. It works. ❤️

Anyway, as I think about the time that I "gain" by getting up early, it makes me wonder why I continue to do it. It's 3:53 AM and I've been up for almost an hour planning my day, creating content and figuring out what the next move is with my coaching business. I also checked the weather to see what the probability is that we will be outside getting something done today. It'll be a few hours before Wendy gets up...you know...when other normal people do. I'll have to be careful with my approach. Sometimes my excitement for the day and desire to share my well thought out plans are met with one eye cracking open and a look of "bruh, I love you SO much, but give me a minute...you're like a cat with a yarn ball.." 🤣 

One other thing that I do when I get up early is to immediately text back the people that texted me after 10 PM. I get a good hearty chuckle out of that one.... "Here you go, boss....MORNIN'!"  It's been a while since I sat down and wrote a blog that was about something other than one of my LIVE365 topics so feels good to just riff a bit. Oh, and Grammar Police, relax, I'm just gonna roll here....lots of commas, quotations, dotdotdots and an occasional double space after a period. Shoot me. Hopefully you hear my voice in here somewhere. 

The last year has been a wild ride for Wendy and I. I came back from a conference in January and we decided to put the condo on the market and stop talking about moving north and make it happen. When I look back, I think what drove the decision was our desire to be closer to Katahdin (Maine's highest peak), and further away from the hustle bustle of Southern Maine. Some of you that live in large metropolitan areas that I get to interact with through my business probably just chuckled at that hustle bustle comment. We now live in a community of 880 people. When we dove into this, we had no idea where we would end up, what our house would look like or how much work it was gonna take to get there. It's mid October and I can confidently say we did the thing. We took action without having all the answers. It was scary. We loved the condo. We loved our neighbors Jimmy and Jackie, I loved being close to my childhood home and my parents. Wendy certainly loved being available to her boys. But we took a good long and hard look at what WE wanted, and although it was a tough decision to move three hours north, we made the move. I think it started a year or two before that when I mentioned to Wendy at camp one day that I would love to live up this way someday. I asked her if she could and she said yes. Here we are. We have an 800 foot driveway, six beautiful acres and a view of the mountain that keeps getting better every day. It was a long road, but we made it. Everything has a price. My hands tingle.  My back hurts. My thumb clicks when I move it. I need to lose weight because a huge remodel will have you eating gas station pizza too many nights a week. To say that we "went hard in the paint" is an understatement. I think we took on something very few people would have been willing to take on and we won. 

You can't win if you don't play. There were a couple of things that we knew going into this. I knew that if something didn't go the way we wanted it to we would fix it. I'm always telling Wendy "we will figure it out". We always do. With regard to the project, I literally had a "what's the worst that can happen?"attitude. Give me that building and get out of my way was my thought. The irony? Here's a guy that spent the last few years getting out of the remodeling business and here I was knee-deep in an extensive remodel. Life is funny that way. I did have a few chuckles on that one during the project. We could've played it safe, we could have stayed in the condo in Windham and not had a 3 acre field to mow. But then I wouldn't have an emotional support tractor. I wouldn't be able to whip the tennis ball for the dogs literally as far as I possibly can and not even come close to the road. We wouldn't be able to enjoy our love for Mighty Katahdin right in our backyard. We played and we won. 

I'm glad we made this move. When we saw this place for the first time, I said to Wendy, "nothing in here scares me". She responded that she was actually horrified. For the first 112 days after we owned it, we showed up here and dropped a solid 10 to 12 hours of labor on this place. I think we took the Fourth of July off and maybe the fifth. Wendy attended a girls weekend in southern Maine but other than that every single day was committed to getting us moved in here. On August 18, we spent our first night. I was under the impression that after we moved in the work would slow down, but it really hasn't. It's different though, we chat each morning about what we are going to tackle today, what time my coaching calls are and what our energy level is for doing more work. Sometimes it's just a simple ride to Patten to get Wendy some jungle juice so she can get right with the world. 🤣 Either that or a cold crisp diet Pepsi at the Irving. And I DO like a good trip to Patten to see the folks at Richardson's Hardware even though Wendy says I have a "Bro-mance" with Nate, the owner. Hey- if they don't HAVE it, you don't NEED it. And man have we met some wonderful people here. That's another blog altogether.

I think our move here scared a few people. "What are they thinking?". "People don't move north they move south!". However, it's fun to see the lightbulb come on when the people come to visit and step out onto the deck to see the mountain. I think initially people were concerned that we didn't know what we were doing. Quite the opposite actually. We knew exactly what we were doing. You see, Wendy and I... how do they say it?...... got together later in life. We live with some urgency and a ton of intentionality. Sometimes the conversation comes around to "what if?". But we usually snuff that conversation out because any other path would not have us here at this time. That said, we don't waste days, we discuss issues and talk about things and we check in with one another. I think I realized the other day that we had made the right decision when Wendy said "if something happened to you. I probably would just stay right here". I said I felt the same way.

It's been fun to restart. It was a metric ton of work but worth it. I think sometimes we get settled into something or somewhere in life and maybe we feel like this is it. This is our chosen path. SAYS WHO? We decided not to settle for that. We simply answered the question that I ask so many of my coaching clients..."What would have to happen?". And then we made it happen. It wasn't pretty at times. It was hard. There were tears. But like most things, it all worked out in the end. Did every day go perfectly? No. Did we have every single little thing figured out? No. But we weren't going to let each other down either. I think if you have someone like that to do life with you've caught lighting in a bottle. 

So here we are, doin' the thing. Sourdough starter, affectionately named Gertrude, sauerkraut, coaching calls, Love & Kindness Threads, barking dogs and a love for one another that grows daily. Who's got it better than us? 😊

WE live in the greatest country in the world. We have the freedom to do whatever we want. Live YOUR life, do YOUR thing and do it wherever you please.  Don't let the world put you in a box. And if you're up early, well, hit me up. I'll just be over here working on world domination. 😉

Oh, I almost forgot. I coach business owners. We attack the gap between where you are and where you want to be. I help you Find YOUR Edge. I'm always available to chat. If you think you'd like to talk about how I can help you then please grab my link below. Let's talk about it. 👊

https://calendly.com/bobturner21/test