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Life has a way of setting you straight when you get your ambitions and capabilities confused.  Sometimes it takes years to happen and other times it’s near instantaneous.  Well this week life served up a little reminder of the way the world works.

Whenever we’ve talked about moving to Townsville I’ve just assumed that finding work won’t be a problem.  I’ve been rather naively forgetting that there’s an economic crisis happening and that the Federal and State Governments are starting to batten down the hatches.  Given that both of us work in/with the Government it might have been a little silly to do so.

When we got home from our holiday I started contacting people about transferring up to Townsville.  Turns out Canberra may be just like Hotel California… It was easy for me to transfer down here but transferring back home is another matter entirely.  By the end of Thursday the writing was on the wall; jobs are not going to be an easy thing to get.  (That’s in relation to the level of pay we want and our fields of specialization.)

We had some hard talks about our future and it was rather upsetting but we made the grown up decision of withdrawing our offer on the house in Townsville.

It hurt. I won’t lie. I feel bad for getting the hopes of the seller up.  I wish there was some way that I could apologise to them.  (We’ve passed our extreme apologies on to the Agent and asked that they pass them on to the seller.)

It’s a bittersweet decision.  We both really love Canberra so staying isn’t a hardship and it’s meant that we don’t have to go through the pain of saying goodbye, but I really want to be close to my folks.  We just have to accept that sometimes making the best decision for our family means doing something that might not be what we want to do in that moment.

Now we’re not saying that we’ll never move up to Townsville, but we’ve made the decision that for our foreseeable future our needs are best served by staying where we are and consolidating.

The one thing that has become clear is that we want to sell our current home and move into something else.  So on Saturday we signed with an agent and our house will be on the market by the end of the month.  It’s both exciting, nervous and exhausting.  Just thinking about getting the house ready for sale is making me tired!

We’re going to sell the house (God willing) and then reassess our options at that time.  We’re going to continue to keep an eye on the job market in Townsville, but we’re not going to be OCD about it.  We’re going to take some pressure off and enjoy life for a little while.

Now that we’re moving forward with the decision to sell I have the task of packing the house and getting it ready for sale.  This is something that is going to be interesting given that we have specific timeframes and I still have to look after the Little Man.  But I’m a determined lady so I’m sure it’ll happen.

In the meantime I’m going to enjoy surfing the real estate websites and looking at places that could be our new home.