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When Long Weekends Aren’t Enough, You Up And Move

posted 17th August 2010    Written by: Doniree    CATEGORY: Doniree, Job/Career/Work, Season 3, Travel/Adventure

I’d decided sometime in the middle of a jet-setting summer (nine trips between Memorial and Labor Day) that I needed to spend longer than three days at any given time in the cities I was exploring. You just can’t do Colorado in a weekend. You can’t do Chicago, LA, or New York in a weekend. You can’t spend all of the quality family time you want to spend in Alabama in a weekend.

Turns out you CAN do Vegas in a weekend. Any longer than that and you’ll end up perma-glittered and hating life.  Or at least hungover, broke, and sunburned. And that’s pretty much the same thing.

The New Local

So I knew three days at a time wasn’t enough, and the seed was planted to actually physically move to some of these places – even for a short period of time – to really experience life there.  To know what coffee shops the locals frequent, which restaurants really *are* the best, and how to not get lost.  This idea of a career that allowed me to be mobile wasn’t going away.

It was November 2009, and I’d just graduated from yoga teacher training. I felt more capable, self-aware, and empowered than I had in my entire life. Little things mattered less. Placing ad buys wasn’t doing it for me. The promise of extra zeros on the end of my paycheck wasn’t doing it for me.  At this point, I didn’t care about money. I cared about depth, about relationships, about learning and connecting to myself and the world I existed in.  Two hundred hours of immersing myself in everything yoga over an eight-week span would do that to a person, I suppose.

I decided that if I was going to move around and explore the world, now was the time to do so.

My top two choices were easily Denver and Chicago.  However, being that it was November, and I was making this decision from Minneapolis, I ruled Chicago out almost as quickly as I’d considered it. I love the Windy City, but the idea of similar winter temps to those of the Twin Cities without the magical skyways that keep us insulated and warm? Not ideal.  Not at first.

I started looking west and had Denver map-dotted in my mind, and I visited in December with the intention of finding a cute pseudo-downtown studio apartment near coffee shops and city parks.

Turns out  my aim was about 30 miles southeast of where I was really supposed to land.

When you know, you know

I’d met Grace Boyle through our blogs and mutual connections and she invited me to come up to Boulder for an evening and an event.  That event happened to be Ignite and brought together over 1,000 of the city’s finest minds, best drinkers, and funniest presenters I’d ever seen. If you haven’t heard of Ignite, check it out immediately (and if it’s in your city, go, present, and toast your new friends).

I fell in love with Boulder immediately.  From the pedestrian mall on Pearl Street, to the balance of start-up and tech company rich culture with outdoorsy croc-wearing hippies, and the amazingly bright and like-minded people who lived there, I was hooked.  I also loved that Boulder seemed to draw a lot of wanderlusters like myself – it seems more likely to meet someone from somewhere else than meeting someone Boulder born and bred.

My plans quickly shifted from Denver to Boulder and the plan was in motion.  Six weeks later, I arrived in Boulder, moved into the first available-for-sublease condo I checked out, and started pouring every ounce of free time into earning back that relocation budget that had quickly hit sub-zero.  I wrote $8 articles for content mills, and my blogging gig for a Minneapolis media agency was my only “real” income until I took a contract job in February.

Turn the page

Since moving to Boulder in January, I’ve accomplished a lot:  yoga, volunteering, hiking, additional contract work, lots of wine, built relationships with some of the most open and genuine and intelligent girlfriends I’ve ever known, picked up a Boyfriend who blows my mind in terms of what I ever thought was possible in a relationship, taken a full-time job, and re-committed to training needed to really start teaching yoga. Yet the story doesn’t end here.  In fact – this is where it begins again.

I have plans for the fall that include even more changes and a crazy amount of learning, writing, mentoring, and yoga in a very real way.  I’ve been making some big decisions that you’ll literally be experiencing with me as they unfold over the next six months. So, get cozy because the next chapter literally begins now.

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