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Motivations and expectations

(Note: This post was written by Laurel Regan and originally published in a separate blog called “Why Windsor…”, which was later merged with Alphabet Salad.)

As we’ve been planning and talking about our upcoming move to Windsor, we’ve run into some interesting responses, both to our reasons for moving and to our choice of city. It seems as though most everyone, from people who know us well to those on the outermost periphery of our lives, has an opinion on our life choice!

While most people appreciate and even understand our reasons for moving, few seem able to wrap their minds around why we’ve chosen Windsor, of all places. Some suggest their own city or cities of choice (“If it was me, I’d move to _____. Have you thought of moving there?”), while others hint that we may be building Windsor into some kind of “dream city” in our minds, and caution that those expectations will be shattered when we discover that it’s nothing like what we’re used to here in Victoria.

It can be frustrating.

I’ve written about our motivations and how we came to choose Windsor as our new home, but find it difficult to condense those thoughts into a pithy sentence or two that reassures people that yes, we’ve thought this through and yes, we are aware that there are some negative aspects about Windsor and yes, we are going into this with our eyes wide open. While I realize that we’re under no obligation to rationalize our choices to others – that our decisions are ours and ours alone as a couple – I can’t help wishing that more people would “get” where we’re coming from and be excited along with us.

I guess if I had to pare it down to one sentence, I’d say this: We don’t expect Windsor to be our dream city, but we choose Windsor because living there will bring us closer to our dreams.

Among other things, we dream of…

  • owning our own home
  • living mortgage- and debt-free
  • spending less on day-to-day living
  • working fewer hours
  • having more free time to learn, grow, exercise, volunteer, travel, socialize
  • being able to easily travel by vehicle to a wide range of destinations without the necessity of using a ferry
  • being able to travel to overseas destinations within a more reasonable budget

… and Windsor, my friends, ticks all the boxes. Perhaps that’s not enough for you, but it’s what this move means to us.

And that’s enough for me.

Laurel Storey, CZT – Certified Zentangle Teacher. Writer, reader, tangler, iPhoneographer, cat herder, learner of French and Italian, crocheter, needle felter, on-and-off politics junkie, 80s music trivia freak, ongoing work in progress.