Thursday, January 20, 2011

Think Big

I started making plans for my do-over by drawing up plans to renovate the unfinished basement in the large home my soon-to-be-ex-husband and I had built in the middle of an 80-acre piece of land in northeast Missouri. There, with a little creative thinking, I could put in two rooms with private bathrooms, a large open dining/sitting room and a small but very efficient kitchen and laundry to serve the bed & breakfast. One bedroom would have two windows on the east side and a pair of French doors opening out to a huge patio and the yard. The second bedroom would have a bank of four windows looking out onto the terrace and yard. The French doors in the sitting area would be the B&B entrance and room to take breakfast or whatever meals I served outside when the weather was nice. 

I created my business plan and knew, because the ex and I had been the general contractors for the house construction, how much it would cost to do what I wanted -- right down to the last sheetrock screw. My marketing plan was detailed which was to be expected. After all, I own my own one-woman marketing consulting agency. Even though I could do most of the work myself and had the budget honed down to a very modest cost, turning the profit I needed within the timeframe required to be able to start paying the massive home mortgage within a certain period of time was going to be a challenge. It meant that I would never be able to afford to travel elsewhere because I would be tied to my home and my business there. That was acceptable in the beginning. I loved my home and had poured my heart and soul into it. The thought of leaving it behind broke my heart. 

During the beginning of the divorce negotiations, I visited friends in Tulsa. They had spent their recent vacation in Tuscany and wanted to show me photos. The villa they had rented was beautiful and the countryside breathtaking. It was in the middle of this presentation of photos that my friend turned to me and said, in his typical matter-of-fact way, "I understand why you want to have a B&B. You'd be good at that. But why Kirksville? Why not someplace like Tuscany?" 

My first inclination was to bristle. After all, I couldn't bear leaving my home. But his words kept running through my head during my nine-hour drive back to that home. The next day, I wandered around my home, the yard with all of the gardens I had built with love and sweat and more than a little blood at times, then sat, silent, on the massive deck that overlooked nothing but field and trees in total quiet. This is beautiful, I thought. I love this place. I'm connected to it. I just can't bear to let it go. I have to figure out how to make my plan work.

My conviction was obvious to my friends who encouraged me at every turn. One of my best friends actually wrote me a large check and told me to use it to start work on my dream and just pay her back whenever I could. She was so enthralled by my determination that she wanted to see me realize my dream. What an incredible friend. I forged ahead, bolstered by the confidence she instilled in me with her phenomenal gesture. 


Then, I received the first response to my divorce-settlement proposal. Although I had already told the near-ex that I wanted to keep the house and the land and he had seemed okay with that, he now told me he would never give up the land because his father has farmed it. No, I could keep the house and a tiny spit of land around it and he would keep the rest.


He might as well have built a 40-foot-high wall around me and that house. And it was at that moment of reading his words while sitting at the beautiful kitchen island I had always wanted, looking out the sunroom windows of the room I had painted and decorated with such care that I looked around me and, for the first time ever during the nightmare marriage of the past four-plus years, realized that I could leave it all behind. It was, after all, just a house.

At that moment, I started to think big.





Wednesday, January 5, 2011

How About a Do-Over?

In the United States, we have a term we use when we get to repeat an action without suffering any penalty for the previous action. It's called a "do-over." Perhaps this term is used elsewhere, I wouldn't know. I know little about the rest of the world, really. But I'm going to learn, that's for sure.

If you're unfamiliar with the term, here's an example. Let's say I tee up my ball in golf, take a swing and totally whiff it. Only the force of the air -- strengthened by a ferocious swing that makes contact with nothing solid -- knocks the ball off the tee. If I'm playing a real match, I'm out of luck. If I'm playing with friends for fun, I might get a do-over. That means I don't have to take a stroke for it. I'm allowed to put the ball back on the tee, take a couple of practice swings (again), step up and position myself for yet another tee shot during which, I hope, I'll actually make contact with the little dimpled white sphere and send it flying straight down the fairway. 

With a tried-and-true do-over, you suffer no consequences from your failed first attempt. You get to pretend the first try (and its devastating results) never happened. Imagine a life where everything you try and fail qualified for a do-over. How much happier we might be, and how much braver we might be in making the first attempt.

A do-over allows us to move forward without the penalty of error. But the value of a do-over exceeds the lack of penalty. We gain the benefit of learning from our mistake. How great! I whiff the drive and get to start over, but I know that I straightened my legs too much or bent my arms too much and that's why I missed the first time. With a do-over, I get a free pass to try again without consequence but with the benefit of knowing what I did wrong the first time.

I want a do-over with my life. I want the benefit of starting over without the penalty of my mistakes; however, I also want the benefit of knowing my errors so I can correct my swing and hit a hole-in-one. I want it all. Who doesn't?

Without getting into any of the gory details, I recently closed the door on a marriage to a spouse who thought the grass was greener elsewhere. I held on for as long as I could to no avail. At some point, you really have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and keep moving. The million-dollar question is, "where?" 

When you get married, you start charting the course of your life -- careers, homes, children, retirement -- all the stuff of dreams. So, what do you do when you find yourself on the backside of your 40s with nothing to show for it? Disillusion is hell. And if your marriage involves more than two people, your confidence takes an incredible beating. I'm not sure how others handle the situation, but I spent a lot of time -- years, in fact -- trying to hold on to something that no longer existed. Hanging on seemed to be easier that starting over. That is, until something inside shatters and you wonder if you will ever recover.

So, I finally decided it was time to come up with new dreams. Maybe that's why people, like me, who suffer from depression, try to spend so much time sleeping. We aren't depressed. We're simply trying to dream a new dream to replace the one that's lying in tatters under the bed. But one day, I berated myself for whining and asked myself instead, "If you could do anything in life, what would you do?" My answer came remarkably quickly. I want to write and run a bed and breakfast. My do-over began. 

Of course, that was the easy part....