How Moving to the City Slowed My Life Down

Six months ago, my life was completely different.

My husband, Zach, and I lived in the smallish town where we grew up. We lived near both of our families and saw both at least once a week. I was knee deep in teaching research paper unit to my eleventh grade English Class. I was on a slew of committees each with their own weekly, biweekly, or monthly meetings. And I was in the middle of changing careers, applying to grad school, and planning a community art show. It sounds pretty crazy, but my life has always been like that.

Then I moved to the city. And everything froze.

It was just me, Zach, and the third largest city in the nation. For the first time possibly ever, I had to be still.

There were no more weekly family dinners. There were no familiar faces when running to the grocery store. There were no meetings. There were no students.

At first it was a bit lonely. Coming from a large family, I am energized by being around people. A lot of people. All the time.

Zach and I didn’t meet anyone in our building for two weeks. We explored the city. We watched copious amounts of Netflix. We slept in. In the beginning I was restless. I resisted my new empty schedule. I found volunteer opportunities. We jumped into a small group at a church we’d only attended once. I started seeking out Kiwanis Clubs.

Then, one day, three weeks after moving, I realized I had something going on almost every day of the week. Suddenly, I was stacking obligations on one another, and I wasn’t very passionate about any of them.

So I took a step back. I started to cut things out of my life one by one which is something I had never done before, and something I probably could not have done if I had stayed in Greeley.

Once I cut things out of my schedule, I actually had time to do little things I had always neglected (read: dishes). Zach and I have spent our entire marriage jumping into things we thought would make us adults. We have piled on so many external responsibilities that we often let the little things go—it was easy to do when we were running from one thing to the next constantly. When we moved here we actually took the time to cook (almost every night!), wash the dishes (right after dinner!), and make our own coffee (which makes our moms happy, and saves us tons of money).

None of the things I have just listed are remarkable. But they are things adults do. Things that Zach and I felt like we “skipped” in the busy-ness of our first years as adults. We needed to remove some of the time-clutter in our lives, and moving helped us to do that.

So, I am trying something new, something I've always wanted to do, but never found the time to. I am taking the time to live intentionally. And, as part of living intentionally, I want to write more. I love to write, but one of the sad truths of being a super-busy English teacher is that your hard-pressed to find time to write. My hope is that this blog becomes a place where I actually write.