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I Failed, But One Woman Helped Me Succeed
It wasn’t what I was looking for. It was what I needed.
I took my two dogs and moved out of the country with grand plans. To pay down the student loans dictating my life, and to stash some extra cash away for a future home — whenever and wherever it might be.
I kept the plans simple. As one college professor repeated, “Keep it simple stupid.” One of the many lessons I picked up from my overpriced education, though I’m pretty sure I had a middle school gym teacher who said something similar.
That was the plan. It was stupid in its simplicity. Move to an affordable country, dump whatever free cash I saved on those loans, and in no time at all I’d be financially free.
The problem was, that I failed to consider the two constants in my life. Lessons learned, though not from college. The first, it’s never going to be easy. And the second? It’s probably going to rain.
I tended to move in the midst of heavy downpours. Post-hurricane rainstorms greeted me when moving to Savannah for college, as did a monsoon in Tucson. I didn’t even know it rained in Arizona, let alone had a rainy season. The things they don’t put in travel brochures. I wouldn’t recommend lugging a king-sized pillow-top mattress up outdoor flights of stairs in the middle of a…
