One of the many transitions I dealt with this summer: the space between the sheathing and the wheel well.
This summer has been intense. Many significant life changes and lots of activity on the tiny house front as I tried to hit some self-imposed deadlines. Way too much stress, and the blog has suffered as a result. But now I’m catching my breath again and realizing a major update is in order. As I pulled photos to include, I realized that the update was going to be excessive even by my epic post standards, so I’m breaking it down into three separate entries. This one covers the month of June. July and August to follow shortly.
For those of you not familiar with my story, the quick background is that I started building a tiny house in Oregon while still living in California. I’ve spent the last year traveling back and forth doing discrete building stints. I originally thought I would move my house down to the Bay Area while I continued at my job as a grant and project manager for the Coastal Conservancy, a state agency where I’ve been for the last 25 years. However, as I got deeper into the process of building, it jumpstarted a whole re-evaluation of where I was in my life and where I wanted to be. I was about to turn 50, I wanted out of the city and the constraints of my desk job, and I really wanted to get back to my native Oregon, closer to nature and family. While normally I wouldn’t be able to live off the tiny pension I would get with early retirement, the low expenses of the tiny house should make it possible for me to piece together an alternative lifestyle I hadn’t thought possible. I’ll still need to work some (I’m retiring from state service, not retiring altogether), but by having my basic needs covered, I have much more flexibility in what I choose to do and how I incorporate my work life with the rest of my life.
All of those life changes and transitions happened this summer. It’s been a crazy time: I was simultaneously making several 12-hour trips up to either build or move belongings, transferring major work projects to new staff, cleaning out and organizing work files, saying my goodbyes to the places I’ve lived and the dear friends I’ve worked and played with for the last 25 years, coming to grips with leaving and starting over in a familiar but new place and a much different lifestyle, learning the ropes of life on a blueberry farm, getting my head around the idea of “retiring” (and all the endless bureaucratic forms that entailed!), building new friendships and connections in my home-to-be, packing up and cleaning my apartment, and actually moving and getting settled in with all that requires. On top of this, I set myself a goal of finishing the exterior of my house so that by the end of August I could move it out to it’s initial parking spot behind the barn and spend my 50th birthday night in it.
These next three posts chronicle some of that experience, as seen primarily from a tiny house perspective. Looking over the photos, I realize that in some cases I was too busy living to get pics of key moments and friends so there are some missing events. I also noticed how much we tend to only photograph the good times (of which there were many in the midst of all the chaos). What you don’t see in these posts are the agonies of indecision about how to proceed with the next step, the many months of elevated cortisol levels from too much stress, the pouring sweat from climbing up and down ladders in 100 degree weather, the few times I broke down in tears of frustration when things broke or didn’t go together as planned or deadlines passed unmet, the sore muscles, late nights, and utter exhaustion. But then, really, who wants to look at those photos? Just know that those untaken pics really should be part of this to balance what appears to be a perfectly graceful handling of major life changes. Lesson: social media never really tells the full story. Continue reading
Naj Haus 