Growing Season

We're back from our South American adventure and man, was it amazing.

I won't be able to distill my observations on the beauty of each country we visited or the people we met until far in the future. But I'm happy to report that our trip has yielded some great story ideas and this traveler is far from weary. In fact, I'm invigorated.

But as you may be able to tell from the lack of posts since our return, my priorities have been split.

In the last few weeks, my husband has accepted a great job which will move us from the East Coast and Northern Virginia to the West Coast and sunny SoCal. He has criscrossed the country to tie up loose ends and has already made the big drive out West. The dogs and I will stay behind until he can find us a permanent home to move into. Meanwhile, I've been dividing my time between catching up on work and working on the transition. Last week alone, I signed and scanned so much moving, storage, mortgage and rent paperwork, the guy at FedEx Office and I have become best buds.

As I write this from Indiana, where friends and family have made gracious homes away from home for us, I can't help but reflect a bit on the rapid changes that have occurred and what it means for my, and my family's, pasts and futures. For the last seven years, (the entirety of our marriage thus far), Jason and I have moved from Indiana to Hawaii to Washington, D.C. to Virginia, and finally (or so we think) California. The moves are what changed my career. (I wrote a guest post on how that happened recently.)

The move to Southern California is the first move we've made completely by choice.

We contemplated an exhaustive pro and con list before doing so and finally and confidently settled on it. I can continue to pursue this freelance gig from there, and I plan to. So there's that lucky thing.

A few other things are in the works, too.

I've decided to take the writing thing a bit further by applying to doctorate programs in Communications and Journalism. If you read this blog often, you might have caught on to the fact that I'm preoccupied with how our industry is changing and how, in the face of that change, new forms of communication and dwindling sales numbers, we can keep it all moving along. I'd also love to teach a group of new, excited journalists what I've learned about how to put a magazine together. Until I put ten years in to actual industry work (and I'm creeping up on that now) I didn't think I was quite qualified to give back. But now I think I am.

Will California be home forever? Who knows. That's our intention.

Right now, and for the next three weeks, the dogs and I will continue to enjoy an Indiana summer. And I'll be off visiting tractor pulls and horse barns for Farm Life magazine right here in my home state.

If there's one thing travel teaches you, it's how to, ahem ... grow where you're planted. I'd argue that freelancing teaches the same skill set.

Happy July, everybody. Enjoy the growing season.