Plan Next
Since I left our last blog post on a cliffhanger I’ll get straight to ending the suspense. The “dramatic conclusion” is: our offer on the Polson land was turned down 3-days ago. We knew it was a long shot. Still, we’re glad we tried. So, onto plan next!
Mike and I had one of what we call our business meetings yesterday morning. We’ve been typically having at least two of these meetings a week since we went all in on our land search efforts this past spring. Yesterday’s focus was on: whelp, what do we want to do now? But before I get into sharing about what our plan next is, I’d like to take a moment to introduce an important member of our Empty Mountain team. He presides over our many business meetings, helps to keep our morale up, and does it all with a friendly smile. Meet our chairman: New Year’s Ox.
When Chinese New Year (also known as lunar new year or TET) started on February 12th, 2021, we entered the year of the metal ox. Soon after Mike and I returned home in February, after having spent a few months on retreat at Deer Park Monastery in southern California, we received a package from one of our monastic friends at Deer Park. New Year’s Ox was included in the package. We find him very delightful :)
He resides in the fruit bowl on our kitchen table. We fetch him when we have our business meetings and literally use him as a playful gavel, to both start and end our meetings. First, he checks in with both Mike and I. Then, when we both give him the nod that we’re ready, he hops up and down a few times (ya know, with our help of course) and our meeting begins. We started enlisting his services as a way to help lighten the mood of our often long, energy-depleting, logistics-heavy meetings. And it works quite famously. The chairman is a valuable member of our Empty Mountain team. It really is quite helpful to have a morale booster on board.
According to thechinesezodiak.org: In the Chinese Zodiac, the Ox is very hardworking and methodical. 2021 is going to be a year when work will get rewarded, and those zodiac signs who are lucky in terms of money this year will be the ones that will make a considerable effort. The Yin energy, specific to the Chinese zodiac sign of Ox, will be quite poignant. This is going to be a year when we will fully feel the weight of our responsibilities, a year when it is necessary to double our efforts to accomplish anything at all. Given what Mike and I are embarking on this year, it seems quite fitting that it should be the year of the Ox, so there’s something quite timely about it all.
Okay. Back to sharing about what our plan next is. We’ve decided that we will continue to look at land, boots on the ground, for at least the next week or two. If we don’t find something to lasso on in, we will likely look to put a pin in our search until next spring. Given that we’re looking to move onto land without structures or services and our summers are short here in Montana, we only have so much time left before we may find ourselves in a real bind with regards to weather and cold temps. Even if we find a property that we can afford and meets some of our criteria, we need to factor in the amount of time it will take to sell our house, go through closing, move out of Missoula, and then get set up on a bare piece of land. This kinda stuff takes time. And since our ability to purchase land is contingent on the sale of our house, we also have to consider the circumstances the buyer of our house will be in. We may need to wait for their loan to go through before we can close on the sale of our house, which could extend us even further out. So while summer has just started, we need to factor in all of the lag time involved with buying and selling and have a realistic timeline in mind for how this will all go down.
Mike found a new property that was listed on the market just yesterday that seems quite promising and we plan to go and look at that one today. And there’s another one we plan to check out on Monday. So our search continues, at least for a little while longer.
Gosh this is hard (I’ve been saying this to myself a lot lately). It’s hard getting, and/or keeping, our hopes up that we will find a property that will meet our needs and our limited budget. We’ve looked at so many properties in the last few months. It’s hard to keep flinging ourselves out there. Even this property we plan on going to look at today: it looks super promising online - the price is really good & the access looks good - but we’ve found ourselves in this spot dozens of times. It’s near impossible not to think: what’s the hitch? We’ve learned that when stuff is in our price range, there’s always a hitch. But I really don’t want this inner doubting voice to run the show. I don’t want to stop holding out hope that what we’re looking for is out there. I don’t want to stop getting out there boots on the ground. However clumsily and confusingly and sometimes down-troddenly, we want to keep on keepin’ on. So that’s-a what we’re fixin’ to do.