Life

I’m sure that everyone that reads my blog also waits anxiously for me to update my Facebook status, so they probably already know this, but I will finally write about here: we are moving to Colorado Springs this summer!

The Colorado job market, as we’ve been told for years and years, is notoriously hard to break into. I guess it’s something about the beautiful mountains and the 300 days of sunshine each year. This led us to believe that we would never be able to live there. Well at least not any time soon. For  this reason, we almost decided to go to Denver for residency, thinking it would give us a greater chance of getting a job there, but their program is 4 years instead of 3, and it just didn’t seem right.

Charlotte has been a pretty good fit for us. We have made some great friends, traveled to a few places that we wouldn’t have if we were out west (DC, Asheville, and the beach a few times), and had a nice, little townhouse in the suburbs (more on this house later).

But Chris spent months and months trying to network in Colorado while we got letters and fliers in the mail almost daily of other jobs trying to recruit. Colorado doesn’t recruit. They don’t have to. They just wait for people to find them. In fact, they don’t always have websites with phone numbers to call. But as it turns out, there is a Charlotte alumni that works for a group in Colorado Springs. And Chris happens to be really good at what he does, he wouldn’t say it himself, but I’m pretty sure any group is lucky to have him.

We traveled to Denver for a few interviews in November and Chris went back a few weeks later for a formal interview in Colorado Springs. And we were officially offered the job last week. Now we have to sell our house and find a place to live in Colorado.

The house goes on the market in three days for far less than we bought it for 2 1/2 years ago, and less than we owe on it now. Clearly, this is not the greatest time to try to sell a townhouse in the suburbs of Charlotte. But if we’re lucky, it will sell. We’ take ANY reasonable offer because we do NOT want to try to rent this place. Or pay for it to be vacant. We’ll probably end up renting once we move because we want to make sure we end up in the right area, and probably more importantly, we’ll need some time to save up for a down payment. And pay back my parents that have graciously offered to help us get out of this place. It’s seems a bit backwards to me that we will have to ask for financial help after almost 6 years of being married and when we are finally finishing the student/resident part of our lives. We’re really grateful for the help though.

Now there is definitely a light at the end of this long, dark tunnel. We’ll miss Charlotte, but we’re excited to finally settle down and put down roots.