The Thirty Day Year

The Achievers-Part 2–Drive of Faith

May 21st, 2008 | by Jeniffer |

photo credit: Tanya Dropbear

Lacy is a writer and editor living the dream in Denver.  She blogs all over the place, most notably at The Me Makeover; and The Spiral Notebook

Taking a Cross-Country Road Trip of Faith

or,

How Place Can Change Your Perspective

My greatest moment of realization happened in December of 2006 when I packed up my life, my husband, and my cat and moved from Orange County California to Broomfield, Colorado with a place to live, but no plans on how to pay the rent. Despite more than a month and a half of unemployment — which would have normally sent me into spirals of anxiety and self-doubt — I was happier than I had been in a long, long time. Something about changing the view out my window had completely changed my outlook on life.

In 2003, my husband and I moved to California from New Mexico, so that he could get his masters degree from the University of California Irvine. My husband had never lived in a big city before. I distinctly remember him coming home one day and shouting, “It’s a FREEWAY — there aren’t any stop signs, or red lights, there wasn’t an accident, so WHY was everyone STOPPING???”

Between the traffic, the smog, the overcrowding, the high prices, and the huge competition for good jobs, our quality of life began to spiral steeply downward. We both found ourselves becoming stressed out, materialistic, and depressed.

One day, in September of 2006, I came to a realization about my life there. My day started at 7:30am with a frantic call from my boss, asking me to come to a photo shoot to which I had previously not been invited. And bring ice. 8am found me in a housing development in Newport Coast called Shady Canyon, where none of the homes is under five million dollars. I was in one of the model homes, which would sell for no less than $13.4 million. The house had an exercise room, a full outdoor kitchen by the pool, and a movie theater in the basement. The master suite was larger than my entire apartment.

I was there for a photo shoot for a client of the PR firm I worked for. The client was a fine jewelry designer, and we were shooting their new consumer advertising campaign. The client showed up with a single black attaché case containing more than $3 million worth of jewelry — that’s $3 million cost (the price is tripled for retail).

Our stylist showed up around 9am with several large, painful looking sores on her face. She told my intern and I that she had gone to her dermatologist for a facial peel, and it had burned her terribly — but she assured us that it would make her skin look amazing. If she didn’t scar.

When my boss turned up an hour and a half late with her child’s nanny in tow to finish her manicure, she expressed concern that the model would be too fat to fit into the clothes she had picked out.

The model we had hired was — literally — six feet tall and a size six.

Fortunately, the model had no trouble fitting into the clothes our boss had purchased on her credit card and fully intended to have our intern return — worn — to the stores. My boss did complain that the model’s breasts were slightly too large for some of the tops. (I quipped that if that was our biggest issue, we were probably going to be fine.)

The model was gorgeous, with beautiful sleek, shiny black hair and lovely, flawless brown skin. My boss loudly voiced concern about whether the photographer would be able to photoshop out the beauty marks on her neck and hand, but he assured her that it wouldn’t be a problem. Then, the makeup artist put spray-on body makeup all over the model’s arms and legs to even out her already perfect skin tone.

After picking up ice, arriving before anyone else, making sure the house was open and unlocked, learning to use the lighting and music system, meeting the caterers, greeting the photographer, model, makeup artist and hair stylist, shoot stylist, and jewelry clients, my boss told me she was glad I had come to the shoot after all — because I could drive her nanny back to her house before I went into the office. My intern was allowed to stay, ostensibly because she has dark skin and could “stand in” for the model while the photographer set up shots. But I knew it was because our intern wears more fashionable clothing than I do. She fit in.

And that was when I realized it. I didn’t fit in there, and I never would. And frankly, I really didn’t want to.

That night, I told my husband that we needed to move. The lease on our apartment was up at the end of November, and we decided — almost at random — that we would move to Colorado. It was a terrifying thought, but I had come to realize it was akin to a life or death situation for us. We packed up our stuff, rented a van, and drove two days to reach Broomfield, Colorado, which is smack dab in between Boulder and Denver.

It might as well have been another planet.

Because we were used to paying such ridiculous prices for everything, we suddenly found ourselves living a comfortably middle class lifestyle, with money left over to save, when we had been barely scraping by in California. We both found excellent jobs, much more suited to our talents and more rewarding than the ones we’d had in California. Suddenly, our depression and anxiety vanished. Our lives became much more intrinsically and effortlessly happy. Because we were no longer fighting against our very environment, we could start to concentrate on more important things.

Not everyone can pick up and move cross-country just to get a new outlook on life. I have a dear friend who has tried twice to move to California, to change her life, and has twice had to return home, in her own mind, a failure.

But changing one’s “place” in the world doesn’t have to be so dramatic. Try changing just a few things about your life and marvel at the effect it has:

Rearrange your furniture and/or paint a few walls. The feeling of a fresh start might be all you need to jumpstart a positive outlook.

Spend some time researching where your perfect location might be, and make a plan to get there. Right now, my husband and I have realized we need to be closer to the city to shorten our commutes and eliminate another stressor from our lives. June 1, 2009, we hope to be in our first house.

Research the places you’re drawn to, no matter where they are across the globe. What is it about that place that compels you, and how could you re-create it at home? Does the walkability and cuisine of Paris appeal? Find out if there is a neighborhood of your current city that might give you a similar culture.

Make a list of 100 things that would improve your outlook, no matter how big or small. Highlight the ones you can do right now, a week from now, a month from now. Make a plan to get to the ones that are further out of your reach.

Sometimes, the littlest things can have the biggest impact on how we live our lives. Sometimes, a major change is needed to get the fresh perspective we need. As I look out my window to the Rockies for inspiration, I know that the biggest, scariest change of my life, was eminently worth it.

Series Navigation

«The Achievers–Part 1–The Five Most Influential Forks On My Road to HappinessThe Achievers-Part 3–Getting Started and Learning As You Go»