Hello World!

Hello world!  I'm alive again!!!  YAAAAYYYY!!!

It feels like I've come out of a very long hibernation - hidden away in the depths of the earth under all sorts of rubble and insulating material only to wake hungry and anxious to see the sun - I feel alive again.  Life is good, the future is positive and things are looking up.  

So what have I been up to?  Why have I not been loitering around the internet as much as I used to (and to be truthful, I did loiter a lot.  A lot.)????  Weeellll, pull up a seat, grab yourself a coffee and I'll tell you all the goss.....

Where to start... well, Lucky Phil and I are now living in Bris-vegas.  We moved down about 3 1/2 months ago after doing a day trip two weeks before we had the moving truck booked to find somewhere to live.  Nothing like a tight timeframe to make you lower your standards and loosen your budget. Turned out well despite our expectations - train, supermarket, newsagency, post office and bottle shop (!!) at the end of the street and a 2 minute drive to work...couldn't have planned it if we tried.

We've bought a new business and took over the week we moved down.  This was also happening at the same time as we were closing down our previous business and packing up the house to move.  Stressful much.  We're now in the takeaway coffee game, providing caffeine hits to all and sundry.  Some days I feel like a dealer, publicly handing out dope to the masses right there on the footpath.  A HUGE learning curve for me - I not only don't drink coffee (sacrilege!!) but until a few days before we opened the doors for ourselves, had not ever made a coffee (instant home stuff for family and friends excluded).  Stressful V. much.

What next?  Oh yeah, we are loving the weather in Brissy.  Winter? You call this winter? Okay, sure, I'll take it!  I think I have worn a jumper for a full day only once since we moved down.  I certainly didn't need to pack those scarves and jackets, nor those flannelette sheets!  Mind you, I am most likely still acclimatised to the weather on top of the range (guaranteed to be 10 degrees less than the rest of the state) but this feels a lot like a Toowoomba summer to me.  I'm not complaining either way!  

We're making the most of the city this time around - a conscious decision to find new places and new experiences.  When we lived here last we took it for granted.  Sure, it might not have been as 'developed' then as it is now and it is certainly more multi-cultural now but we didn't actively enjoy it.  For the last six years we've been limited to only one restaurant that constituted our 'night out' (due to it's consistently good food - so many started out great but by the third visit we swore never to return) but now, every place we go serves the most amazing meal ever!  We are yet to have a bad experience (touch wood)....

Life is grand.  Lucky Phil told me at the start of the year that 2013 was going to be a year of change for us and hasn't it been that!  Big changes, good changes, happy changes.  And we're not even finished the year yet - who knows what else is in store for us.  What I do know though is that I'm ready for it!  yay!

Nearly there....

Phew!  What an absolutely life changing month May has been.  

In less than a week now, Lucky Phil and I will be taking the next big active step towards making our world a happier and more fulfilling place....

It started mid last month actually, when an opportunity presented itself that was too good to pass up and was a key stepping stone to changing our lives.  For so long we have preached to each other and to any one within earshot that if you aren't happy with something, you need to actively change it to get a different result, potentially the result you would prefer.  Change will happen on it's own but usually slowly.  You need to take decisive action to force change if you want it to happen any earlier.  And then something happened for 3 years in our lives where we stopped listening to our own advice and sunk into a cesspool of self-doubt and stagnation.  Three years of it.  It has nearly been the undoing of us (not 'us' us - just of our own selves).

But then we had a startling realisation, a light bulb moment, when we saw that this hole we were in was of our own doing and that we had the key to the door to get out of it.....Amazing thing the mind, change your mindset and you change your outlook on life and all of a sudden the clouds  in the sky are pretty and fluffy and a sign of a beautiful day rather than an indication of a potential storm....

And that's what we did.  We changed our mindset and now we are about to reap the rewards.  Last week I worked my last day in my job.  This weekend we pick up the keys to our new place in Brisbane and in a week we will be moving.  A week after that we will be taking over our new business and once again working together, just Lucky Phil and I.  About a month after that, the sale of our investment property will be finalised and our house will be rented out.

All happening at once.  Very exciting.

Now I just have to go through our bits and bobs and accumulated 'stuff' and work out what to keep, what to donate, what to chuck and what to store.  Three bedroom house on land to two bedroom unit.  I need to be very choosy.  

Nothing like a short timeline to really get the blood pumping!