365+ Days in the Pacific Northwest

Moving to the Northwest was one of the bigger decisions I've made in recent years. Complacent with my sunny and palm tree packed life, I still felt an ambition for challenge and change but was lacking momentum.  Never have I ever had the thought, "Seattle seems like a nice place, I think I'll try living there!" Yet, one year ago, that's exactly what I did. I condensed 7 years of my past life into a few suitcases, said a tearful goodbye to my best friends and jumped on a plane. I arrived at the cusp of fall and the dawn of winter. People thought I was crazy.  If I hadn't been so overwhelmed with emotion, finally living in the same zip code as Jared, I probably would have thought the same. Regardless, I donned my new rain boots and rarely took off the North Face jacket. I learned the importance of wool socks and increased my coffee intake to warm myself from the outside in.

I quickly found a job and got into a rhythym of a having a corporate schedule. I took up hot yoga and escaped the city on weekend getaways.  I experienced snow  and felt no guilt about staying indoors on the weekends (something I would never have done in Hawaii).  Winter turned to Spring which transitioned to Summer not a second too soon. The elongated days of sun was just what I needed to shake off the previous months....

I choose to write uplifting, inspiring posts because I'm a forever optimist. I think the world needs more encouragement and I want to aid that through my writing and sharing refreshing stories. That doesn't mean that the challenges didn't occur, and they pierce deeper than the surface level issues of weather and feeling frozen half the year.  The hardships are important to process and have their place too.  Together, the various combinations of experiences  make up the person I woke up as today. Maybe I didn't share the months that I felt miserable because I had stopped my yoga practice and was consumed with work I didn't enjoy. I didn't mention how a card from my best friend in Hawaii made me burst into tears and miss home more than anything.  I didn't write about the morning that I looked at myself in the mirror, and truly couldn't recognize the person before me. There were plenty of disheartening days.  But in reality, they were legitamtely overshadowed by the bright ones where I felt myself expand and relax with new life. As Rumi says, "If you are irritated by every rub, how will you be polished?" As I move into my second year in the Northwest, I'm ambitious to keep refining.  I've entered a different chapter where life look incompatible to the one I lived for so long. But I really do fancy it.  Who knows what the next year in Seattle will bring, but I assume I will become even more of a coffee & food snob, climb a few more peaks, fly down to California a half dozen more times to see family (perks of bring back on the mainland!) , and maybe, just maybe,embrace winter by taking up a snow sport.