It is official! We have broken ground on the house – technically right on (the revised) schedule. Let’s hope this bodes well for the remainder of the project. We’re not kidding ourselves – there will be additional delays – but hopefully these won’t be as epic.

In the past couple weeks, my husband met with the engineers/builder and ran back and forth to La Paz to cross the t’s and dot the i’s on the remaining permit work. One of those trips ended with a high-five from the mayor of Todos Santos – ha! Anyway, we are good to go and site prep has begun. Next up on the docket for construction is land clearing, leveling and the beginnings of the retaining wall. Building on the house is set to start on October 17^th.

Personally, I am prepping for the new reality that I will have to continue to work for a while. This means negotiating with my job to become a permanent employee, which will give me some flexibility (crosses fingers) to work remotely when I move. It will also open me up to a potential bonus and 401k matching. After a bit of financial instability from adjusting to our new living set-up, we are now ferreting an acceptable amount of savings away every month. I was feeling a bit disappointed in myself that I didn’t anticipate how long it would take for us to get financially adjusted, but that is one factor that is extremely difficult to predict. As I’ve mentioned before, when realizing a crazy goal, the ability to adapt based on factors out of your control is critical to success.

This day marks about 6 months into the separation and the half-way mark. We only have 6 months to go before my lease is up and I have to make a move. The form of that “move” will have to be determined closer to the date when I know more about my work situation. This blog post is brought to you by the phrases “revenue optimization” and “flexibility”