Chris and I are both Arizona natives. We grew up here. We actually really love it here. Our family is here. Chris even has a really great job here. In fact even a year ago we both said we would never leave Arizona.
Our families both live about 2 1/2 hours from us. We always thought it was a great distance. Not too close, not too far. We didn’t miss any major events, but we still had our space. I feel like on those drives to visit family we have made some of the biggest decisions. On one particular drive we started talking about the possibility of leaving Arizona. We talked about how much we loved it, but that we have only experienced Arizona. How much we love being close to family, but wondered what it would be like to leave. How much Chris liked his job, but all the opportunities that could come up if we left. That was the first time that we actually thought about leaving.
A few months later there were some changes in Chris’ job that he was less than pleased with. He was running out of projects to do and felt like he was wasting time. We talked again and decided that if things didn’t improve he would start applying to other companies, not limiting himself to companies in Arizona. He even bought a book to start studying for interviewing.
Work picked up a little and he was busy. We didn’t really discuss moving for a few more months. After awhile he would come home from work and I could tell that he wasn’t happy. I asked him about it, and he said he was bored and started to update his resume for his job search. We started talking about moving a lot, but Chris was still dragging his feet. (It was going to be a lot more work for him than it was for me, so I don’t blame him.) Finally I told him for my birthday I wanted him to apply to five different companies. I didn’t care where they were, or what they were, I just wanted us to move forward if we were going to. So on October 17 he started applying. It was a real possibility that we would actually be moving. In all we had discussed moving about 7 months before he applied places and just under a year from discussion, to starting a new job.
