If I am a Macy's Day balloon, James is the hundreds of rope-carrying volunteers preventing it from spinning off and impaling itself on the Empire State Building. I am grateful for him in a way that I have never known, which becomes increasingly apparent the longer we are here. I don't think I have ever struggled to find stability like I am now. Turns out, there's a price to pay for living in such a beautiful (remote) place - everyone with vision is working for themselves, and a community built on the shoulders of owner operators does not have much to offer someone who has always been an operator. And I have no idea how to darn a sock. So that leaves me in a very scary place, one that I am trying daily to rectify, but I've been working so much I come home deflated and discouraged. James has been keeping me afloat, but I do not feel good about putting so much pressure on him, and feel like it's time to turn the tides.
Which is what brought me back here - an outlet to catalog this tumultuous time. I think the only thing to do is the thing that I've ALWAYS thought I would do - to become one of those visionary owner operators. It's just a matter of crawling out from under five months (years?) of dust and remembering that I have the power to do it, and to do it well. I said to James the other day that I think one of the things that has been stopping me is that I always imagined it would be in Delaware, and the thought of opening something here makes me feel like that will never happen. But I have to remember, daily, that this moment is not forever, and things change. And that I have to start trying to make my life, OUR life. Which also, is why we moved here to begin with. So this is the start of trying. The start of business plans, of more red tape than I can imagine, and of backbreaking work. But ultimately I will have something that can support us both, that we can do together, and that will be our next step. Of many.
