First, the positives.  Matt and I moved here a year ago to get away from Los Angeles.  The grit.  The smog eating into my lungs, making me sick on a daily basis.  The grinding work of the film industry.  The high cost of living.  The lack of space to think and breathe and grow anything. 

And we loved living here.  It is beautiful, there are coyotes and wild turkeys and lots and lots of birds.  There is room to grow lots of things.  And finally we had the time to think, breathe, and enjoy life.

But.  There are guns shot off daily to kill the coyotes and turkeys.  There are pesticides sprayed on and near our organic garden.  Our well water may be polluted.  We are not like other people here.  We miss being a part of a community.  We miss our friends, our family.....  We.  Feel. Isolated.

We looked and looked for the perfect place to live, for the perfect place to maybe even grow old.  The perfect place to begin living a truly sustainable life.  For years we looked.  And we found here, right here.  So this is not easy to contemplate.  Not easy at all.

We didn’t expect this.  In the country, we drive much more than the average American drives.  We have done everything we can think of to reduce our consumption, but there is not enough density here, and no good public transportation.

In the country, wages are lower.  Resources are fewer.  We’re living off of salaries that are about 1/10th of what they were in Los Angeles.  And we have too many loans creeping onto our shoulders, weighting us down.  We have reduced our spending as much as we can, and it’s not enough.

This is not sustainable.

And, with this time and space to think, we’ve learned a lot about ourselves and what we’d like to do to make a living, what we’d like to accomplish, how we’d like to spend our money.  This is so good to know.  Essential.

So over the past week and a half, we’ve been soul searching, we’ve been looking into sustainable places to live, we’ve been looking at liberal places to live.  We’ve been looking into work.  And Matt has been looking into going to graduate school.  Law school.  Finally, finally, we have found something that really makes sense for him, something he will be great at, something he will love.

Are we giving up?  The answer is an emphatic no.  Are you kidding?  We have learned so much in the past year, and we are taking it all with us, wherever we go.  We’re going to take the seeds that Doug and Tina sent me this week (you guys rock), and we’re going to plant them in a new garden this year.  And instead of fighting. so. hard. with our neighbors....  Instead of looking. for. so. long. for someone, anyone, to take in two abandoned kitties...  I’m going to use my talents in media to create widespread change.  That is what I set out to do.

This was an incredibly tough decision.  But once we found answers, pieces of life’s puzzle began to fall into place in our minds.  Weights are lifting off of our shoulders.  We’ve been searching for community, for sustainability, for friends, for a place that we feel comfortable... and I think we may have found it.  We still have a few - ok, MANY - things to work out.  And so I’m going to wait a bit before I tell you where we’re going to move.

But rest assured that wherever we move:  the blog is coming along on our journey, the garden is uprooting but it’s going right back in the ground in a new place, The Growing Challenge - yeah 110 participants - not in your life am I letting you all down, and sustainability will always remain essential to our lifestyle.  Our location is changing, but we’re still on the same path.  The path toward a happy, sustainable life.

So I hope that you’ll still join us as we seek out that life, as we journey to this next chapter along that path toward sustainability....