Transitioning into FI

I know I am sup­posed to be on a break, but I was jour­nal­ing and this post pret­ty much appeared and I had to pub­lish it!

I moved to a new town the sum­mer between 1^st grade and kinder­garten. I did­n’t know any­one when I start­ed there. Being a small­er school, friends had already formed groups in kinder­garten and I missed out.

One group I longed to join was Brown­ies. The girls would line up in their vests once a month and I would be in a dif­fer­ent line.

Final­ly, I got to join Girl Scouts in 2^nd grade and LOVED being able to be part of a group. At school, I nev­er real­ly fit in. In Girl Scouts I was free to be who­ev­er I want­ed. This was more true at coun­cil spon­sored events away from the girls I knew, but also true to a less­er extent at school meet­ings when I was­n’t sur­round­ed by boys who were look­ing to make trou­ble for me.

The first few times I went to Girl Scout camp were mag­i­cal. I had the most fun ever. Peo­ple liked who I was and I got to be any­one I want­ed (at least until I got a rep­u­ta­tion with the coun­selors lol). Want to be help­ful? Sure! Don’t want to help? That’s ok too. Be the clown that makes peo­ple laugh? Yep!

Girl Scouts was the first chance I got to dis­cov­er who I want­ed to be, even if my peers at school did­n’t want to accept the fact I changed from the smart mouthed kid with no filter.

Col­lege was anoth­er time in my life to rein­vent myself with­out the bag­gage of past expec­ta­tions. It was a blank slate and I could be who­ev­er I wanted!

It’s lucky, in a way, that I’ve had so many chances to rein­vent myself in the past, because I am cur­rent­ly in the process of under­go­ing a major iden­ti­ty shift. This time, no one is hold­ing me back with their expec­ta­tions but me! So what iden­ti­ties am I shed­ding and trans­form­ing into?

Suburban to Urban

Pret­ty much my whole life I have lived in a sub­ur­ban set­ting. I am the kind of per­son that lived in a qui­et neigh­bor­hood with big hous­es that all had dri­ve­ways and front lawn strewn with toys. Back­yards were big and full of tram­po­lines and pools, or fun wood­ed areas to explore. Very few peo­ple parked on the street thanks to their dri­ve­ways and garages. Every­one I knew drove every­where as the only roads to go any­where had shoul­ders, no side­walks, and lots of cars whizzing by at 50+ mph. Moms made gro­cery runs on Sat­ur­day morn­ings and the day was tak­en up with run­ning errands or oth­er activities.

That was then, this is now.

Now I live in a place with more peo­ple per square mile than I ever knew was pos­si­ble. You’re lucky to own your own house and not share a build­ing with oth­er peo­ple. Street park­ing is the only park­ing avail­able as there are very few dri­ve­ways. A lot of peo­ple don’t even have cars as every­thing you could need is with­in easy walk­ing or bik­ing dis­tance. There are bike lanes on the roads and paths specif­i­cal­ly devot­ed to non-car activ­i­ties. My new neigh­bor­hood has a walk score of 90. (out of 100) My par­en­t’s neigh­bor­hood? 7. And that’s only because a new restau­rant popped up after I moved away.

My name is Gwen.
I walk to most places.
If I don’t want to walk, I can ride my bike.
I get food a lit­tle at a time as we need it.
We are doing well to live in our own house with a lit­tle backyard.

“Gwen who is this we? I thought we were talk­ing about you!”

Long Distance to Live-in

The roy­al we I was refer­ring to is my won­der­ful­ly amaz­ing boyfriend. We went from a long-dis­tance rela­tion­ship to live-in relationship!

Relat­ed: Check out my blog post from when we start­ed dat­ing last year, or lis­ten to his side of the sto­ry. It’s so cute you’ll be sick 🙂

Before, I lived alone for most of my adult life. I had a room­mate in col­lege the first two years, a room­mate in train­ing for mil­i­tary, and a room­mate for a few months in 2015. Oth­er than that, I’ve lived by myself and devel­oped some tru­ly unique and won­der­ful habits. And accu­mu­lat­ed a bunch of stuff and lots of dif­fer­ent hobbies.

Because I could.

That was then, this is now.

Now I live with my boyfriend, the love of my life. He has stuff and ways of doing things. I have stuff and ways of doing things. Those two sen­tences are sim­i­lar but dif­fer­ent, like us and our way of doing things indi­vid­u­al­ly. One thing I’m work­ing very hard on is undo­ing my habit of leav­ing dirty dish­es around. It was a big accom­plish­ment for me to put them in the sink, but now I rinse them AND put them in the dishwasher.

Now we’re liv­ing togeth­er and fig­ur­ing out how to do that with­out killing each oth­er. We’re both still alive and hap­py, so this is work­ing tremen­dous­ly well so far.

My name is Gwen.
I live with my boyfriend.
I clean dish­es after I use them.
We like to play board games and take walks.
We are both finan­cial blog­gers and own real estate.

About that real estate.…

House Hacker to Out of State Investor

Almost a year ago exact­ly, I bought a house. Not just any house. This house was con­vert­ed into a mul­ti-fam­i­ly prop­er­ty. I became a land­lord, own­er, and on-site prop­er­ty man­ag­er all at once. I lived in the house, col­lect­ed rent, found ten­ants and did a lot of repairs.

That was then, this is now.

Now I live in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent state and own from afar. I was­n’t going to get a prop­er­ty man­ag­er, but I’m incred­i­bly grate­ful I did. It’s incred­i­bly upset­ting to know there are things going wrong with the prop­er­ty (like say, an improp­er­ly wired cir­cuit gets shut off and ruins an entire fridge worth of food) and you can’t do any­thing about it.

For­tu­nate­ly, I have a prop­er­ty man­ag­er who came over to look at it and take care of the prob­lem. They will also col­lect rents and find new ten­ants — all things I did once and no longer need to do.

My name is Gwen.
I live in a big city.
I own a mul­ti-fam­i­ly prop­er­ty in a dif­fer­ent state.
If I make lots of mon­ey, I will buy more properties.

“How are you going to make mon­ey, Gwen?”

Young Professional to Entrepreneur

Ever since I grad­u­at­ed col­lege, I had a career job. I was a young pro­fes­sion­al. I was a Lin­ux admin. I was a SQL Data­base tester. I was on an Exec­u­tive Sup­port team. I had a ready answer when I went to young pro­fes­sion­al mee­tups and peo­ple asked me “so, what do you do and who do you work for?”.

That was then, this is now.

Now I don’t have a career job. Now I am an online entre­pre­neur. I am a blog­ger. I am a pod­cast­er. I make pret­ty stained glass pat­terns and sun­catch­ers. I stay home and work on my computer.

My name is Gwen.
I am a blogger.
I am a podcaster.
I do stained glass.
I work from home.

Staple It Together

In the immor­tal words of Jack John­son, sta­ple it togeth­er and what do I get?

My name is Gwen.
I walk to most places.
If I don’t want to walk, I can ride my bike.
I get food a lit­tle at a time as we need it.
We are doing well to live in our own house with a lit­tle backyard.
I live with my boyfriend.
I clean dish­es after I use them.
We like to play board games and take walks.
We are both finan­cial blog­gers and own real estate.
I live in a big city.
I own a mul­ti-fam­i­ly prop­er­ty in a dif­fer­ent state.
If I make lots of mon­ey, I will buy more properties.
I am a blogger.
I am a podcaster.
I do stained glass.
I work from home.

Now this is an over­ly sim­plis­tic view of who I am today. Nowhere list­ed above is a men­tion of my adorable kit­ty cat, my fam­i­ly and my rela­tion­ships with them, or oth­er aspects of my personality.

How­ev­er, this is a great start­ing point for me to ref­er­ence when I start to slide back into who I was! I’m not sure how long it will take for my knee jerk grab-the-keys-we’re-going-some­where reac­tion to fade (or oth­er habits to change) but I’ll keep all of you updated!

Thanks for read­ing! How have you han­dled life changes? Got any advice?