When I moved to Turkey ten years ago I’d never planned to stay. We came for my husband’s job and I vowed that as soon as we could go back to California, we would.
But it didn’t take long for me to fall in love with Türkiye. Since then I’ve been suspended between two worlds.
Within six months we’d crafted a new plan; that once my husband retired we’d live part time in California and part time here. That has been one of the biggest reasons for me to build work that is portable, so I can be in either place at anytime.
This week I got a phone call from home. Someone very dear to me has been diagnosed with health problems and though the prognosis is good, it was a wake up call.
In my dream plan, when my husband retires and we are jetting between countries and everything is just as I’ve left it. My family is well, the economy is thriving, my nieces and nephews are still babies. But time doesn’t stop. When my husband retires it might be too late to live that dream, so I’m reevaluating everything.
I’m no longer after a dream, now I’m on a mission. Everything that I’ve been talking about – working on your own terms, doing what you love, living unbound from space and time, making the most of compromising circumstances – now it’s serious.
Even though the destination remains the same, the path has changed and the deadline has been moved up. I’m forcing myself to recalibrate the GPS to get there differently so I can get there sooner. It means cutting out some of the steps like buying homes and waiting for retirement, but I’ve been forced to re-prioritize which means I’m focused on what’s really, really important.
Not things. Not stuff. But experiences.
If there was ever a time to leverage my global niche, it’s now.
Have you ever been forced to take an alternate path to reach your goal? Were you better or worse off for it?
I have a feeling that this is either going to force me to grow or give up altogether.
But I don’t believe in giving up.
