World's Worst Blogger: Me

Ok, I think we can all agree that I am the world's worst blogger. I just can't seem to make it to the site and put my fingers to the keys. I'll try harder.

Wow, a whole month has passed and I'm getting closer and closer to my April trip to Cuenca. I have my plane tickets and hotel reservations in Quito and Cuenca.

I booked a tour for people thinking of moving to Cuenca through Dixie's Davey's excellent blog, http://www.retire-in-ecuador.com/.

All that's left is finding a secure parking lot for my car near the Boston airport. This is actually the worst part of the whole trip! Once I almost missed a flight because I got lost in the maze around the airport and couldn't find the park/fly lot.

Waiting is hard. I'd like to be whisked through time to April now so I can start my adventure. Notice that I don't have any hesitation about the fact that I am going to have an adventure. The idea of moving to Cuenca has become so much a part of my everyday life, that it is comfortable now...inevitable. Yaay!

In the meantime, we have a couple of feet of snow on the ground here in Vermont, and last night had thundersnow - snow with thunder and lightning! I'm not liking it, but shoveling snow is good exercise, at least.

Saturday, I had a real estate agent to the house, to talk about prices and listing. This is exciting!! I only had a couple of hours notice, but I was able to go through the house like a cleaning tornado before she arrived. Although I do have someone already interested in buying the house, I feel more comfortable with a professional helping me through it.

I am still clearing stuff out of closets and knee wall cupboards, and finally, there's empty space in the house.

I've thought a lot about what to bring with me. Do I really want to drag all my past life stuff with me, or do I want to make a clean break? Making a clean break means getting rid of everything, all the little mementos that I have from all the places I've been. There's a lot of it.

Right now I'm going with the premise that I'll put together a small shipment, not a whole shipping container. I've been wandering around the house, looking at pictures on the wall, pottery on the shelves, and saying "that goes, that stays, that goes...." I don't mind buying new dishes, but my vegetable peeler that my mother gave me when I moved out at 17 has to come.

I still have four cats that I need to find homes for. Soon would be good.
I'll put together little kitty kits for them to take to their new homes: a blankie, their food bowl, a toy, and some food. Their new people will only have to add love and kitty litter. 

Since I can now go out and look at where the dogs are buried with loving remembrance, I know I can shuck whatever I need to to get where I'm headed now.

Finally, ta da, I am making some money online! In fact that's one reason why I haven't been posting - I've been doing jobs and getting paid!

It's all working. I'm actually doing the things I told myself I had to do in order for my plans to work. It feels good. I'm outta here!

El Tiempo Cuenca

I was very happy to usher in the start of 2011, because this is the year that I make my move! Well, I’m making it every day, a little bit at a time, but now that the calendar has turned over to the new  year, moving to Ecuador seems a little more solid, more real.  I mean, I can actually look at the 2011 calendar, point to a month and say, this is the month that I am going!

That little bit at a time part – trying every day to do something that will get me closer to Cuenca – is fantastic. Thinking this way keeps me focused on what I’m trying to do, and even if all I do one day is check my Cuenca blogs and read El Tiempo Cuenca, one of Cuenca’s daily newspapers, I’ve made a connection.

I’m actually feeling a little schizophrenic these days; some of me already in Cuenca, some of me here, filling a cardboard box with stuff to get rid of. Over Christmas, when I read an account of El dia del Nino, when people from all over Ecuador come to celebrate the Christmas Child, I really wanted to be there.

Thanks to the Internet, I could read about it and see photos in El Tiempo Cuenca. Very nice.

The Christmas that I did have here was wonderful, spent with dear friends and filled with good food and good conversation. But I could feel the pull of another Christmas to come.

Progress report: I’ve finished my first online job, and got a 5.0 review from the client – the highest rating possible. Very nice.  Looks great on my profile.

Took advantage of the three-day New Year’s weekend to plow through more stuff and resign it to the trash. How I ever managed to accumulate all this stuff is beyond me.

The energy is flowing in the right direction now

Now that I’ve gotten rid of all that stuff that was hindering my progress (in the last blog), I can move down the path a little further. Just kidding, the stuff is still all here, and no one contacted me and offered to buy it, either. Never mind, the process has begun.

There’s no way that I’m not going, and just to prove that, I booked a reconnaissance trip to Cuenca for April. Watching the fare drop on Kayak.com for three straight weeks convinced me that it had gotten about as low as it was going to get, so I bought. And was totally vindicated, when the next alert came in with a mucho big price increase.  

So now I have a confirmed itinerary in hand, and I’ll fill in the spaces, like hotel nights, as I go along. I’ve found a couple of fantastic websites that will help with that information, and a lot of other information that I’ll want to have for my trip, like a map of the city. Also connected with the official website for Cuenca, which has a great promotional video. The more I see of the city, the more I feel like I’m going to the right place.

One of the websites, www.cuencahighlife.com, is for people who live in Cuenca,  and emails notices for upcoming happenings; art exhibits, concerts, Christmas events. The restaurant review section is fantastic.

Right on the heels of buying my ticket, I started bidding for jobs online, preparing myself for a long period of proposing jobs and being ignored, until I finally got a small one. Incredibly, I got the first one I bid on, and suddenly my whole plan is actually looking like it’s going to happen!  I have a long way to go before I’ll be making what I need to support my Cuenca life, but I feel as though the energy is all flowing in the right direction now.

Wahoo – one day before the Solstice, typically the lowest time of the year for me, and I’m full of energy and looking forward to a 2011 full of changes! And happy holidays to you!!

For Sale: One Past Life

For Sale:

- Service for 12/Blue and White Rice pattern china with dragon design. Bought one dish at a time every time I went to the grocery store in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and lovingly used for over twenty years as everyday china. Service includes dinner plates, salad plates, cake plates, cups and saucers (one small set/one large set), serving platters, three sizes of bowls, teapot, condiment dishes.  

- One rattan chest with black lacquered insets, used as a Christmas tree stand for Christmases spent in Southeast Asia. Then used as a coffee table in New Hampshire and Vermont.

- One collection of the works of Thoreau, including my own journal kept the first winter I lived by myself in New Hampshire, in the style of Thoreau.

- One three-piece set of Makkum porcelain – one ginger jar with lid and two vases, flower and bird design, bought on a day trip to the northern provinces of the Netherlands, where we drove across the sea causeway and marveled at the frozen waves of the North Sea.

- One collection of museum guides, all bought on site: The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia; The Pushkin Art Museum, Moscow, Russia; The Louvre, Paris, France; The Musee d’Orsay, Paris, France; Monet’s Gardens, Giverny, France; The Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands;  Kroller-Muller Museum, The Netherlands; and more.

- One batik representation of Ganesh, the Elephant Headed God, Overcomer of Obstacles, purchased in the main marketplace in Kathmandu, Nepal.

- One white cotton hand woven blanket, bought at a roadside store in the mountains of Greece, at the top of a winding road on the way to the Ancient City of Troy.

- Two small etchings of the Old City of Prague, purchased at a local artist’s stand on the bridge in Prague.

- One framed papyrus depicting geese and ducks feeding, bought at a souvenir shop near the Great Pyramid in Cairo.

These are possessions that reflect my life lived so far - so hard to let go, but impossible to keep if I want to move forward.

Time to Do the Work

To my hundreds of readers, who probably wonder what’s become of me, I can sum it up in two words: FALL BACK. Or, Daylight Savings Time Ends. Or, wake up in darkness, go to work in darkness, come home in darkness, get in your pajamas.

That’s my experience, anyway. There’s some light in the far off distance this year, because I keep saying to myself, “This is the last winter, this is the last winter, this is the last winter.”

A lot of people ask me why, if I hate winter and have Seasonal Affective Disorder, do I live in Vermont?  Well, like a lot of people, I kind of got stuck in one place. But I’m moving now.

I’ve started telling people that I’m moving to Ecuador. Yes! I am moving to Ecuador! Just Google Cuenca, I tell everybody, and you’ll want to go, too. Lots of incredulous looks and questions  - and then people are really very enthusiastic about me going (not them).

I’ve found an internet site for brushing up on my Spanish language skills, and I added one of Cuenca’s newspapers to my favorites, so I can start (trying) to read the paper.

 I’m in a little bit of a hiatus right now, but next week I will start bidding on online jobs, beginning the work that I need to do to establish my income stream, so I can support myself wherever I am.

After countless hours of crafting my online profile, looking at the profiles of people who are already successful, consulting with my guru at Barefoot Consulting on how to break into the biz, I'm more than ready to start. 

If I’m indulging myself a little right now, it's because I know that once I start bidding on jobs, I’m going to be coming home from a full day of work and hitting the computer here for more hours.

I want to believe that I will struggle a little, but will, in the end, get what I need to keep moving with my plan. This is so important that I can’t allow even a wisp of self-doubt to appear.

So, picture me for the next few months in front of my computer, doing the work. Whatever it takes, doing the work.

I’ll be using this blog to vent my frustrations and celebrate my successes, so stay tuned!

Put One Foot in Front of the Other. Repeat.

What was it that I said in that previous blog? Oh, right –

All I have to do is find a way to make $800 a month, sell my house and all my belongings, get rid of my dogs and cats, renew my passport, figure out how to move money around, and I’m gone.

This is not an offhand list that I just threw together – this is the essence of what needs to be done before I can hit the road. The big stuff that I try to make some forward progress on every day.

Here’s a report on how I’m doing so far:

-          No more dogs (sob)

-          Talking to someone who might buy the house

-          Getting rid of stuff weekly with the Three Box Technique (see previous blog)

And the really big one – finding a way to make a living overseas – I work on that almost every night after work. The world of online commerce is alive and well, and I am determined to find my niche – soon!

It’s all about forward movement now. Fortunately, I have a whole team of supporters behind me, rooting me on almost every step of the way. These guys have provided me with so much valuable information in the last couple of months – it’s piled up all around my computer and banging around in my head 24/7. As soon as I figure out how to create links here, I’ll start posting contact information, so if you catch the itch while you’re reading my story, you’ll be able to find answers to your questions.

In the meantime, I am putting one foot in front of the other, moving forward, getting a little done every day.

Hoy, 3 de Noviembre, es el dia de Independencia de Ecuador.

P.S. Better learn some Spanish, too!

Some Days it seems like an Impossible Dream

I guess it’s inevitable that doubt creeps in every once in a while. I can repeat all the positive affirmations that I’ve created until I’m blue in the face, but some days, Cuenca seems very very far away.

These are the days that I ask myself – WHAT ARE YOU THINKING? Uprooting yourself from all that’s familiar to move into the unknown. It’s like Halloween – scary. Who knows what might be lurking out there. WAH HAH HAH.

I’m already lonely, and I haven’t even left yet. The process of clearing my life of possessions and entanglements is making me sad. I’ve started a Sunday ritual of going through the house and putting together one box of books for the used bookstore, one bag of clothes for the donation bin, and one pile of stuff to take to the Salvation Army.

I’ve been doing this now for a couple of months – at first, after dumping off the three containers, I would come home and discover that there was still a mountain of extraneous crap lying around. But today, after dropping things off and coming home, it felt a little empty.

Now it’s coming down to – what can’t I bear to let go. An interesting question, since two weeks ago, I let go of the two beings I loved most in the world - my dogs – which has created a sadness in me that is beyond description.

But even on the worst days, a small voice inevitably makes its way through the melancholy: how can you stop now, after having given up so much?