I received this question last week, one that both Walt and I get more frequently, so I thought I’d answer it here.
I’m so intrigued with how you and Walt move back and forth between the U.S. and Ireland. I’m just totally curious. How do you two decide when to be here and when to be there? Your answer may open my mind up to rethinking how I live. I’m so locked in on “I have to live and work here in Farmington,” but maybe there are some other options I should shake my head at (to wake it up) and consider, as I move along closer to 60. I still have a yearning to live in Italy. Maybe.. why not…sometime soon. So, I’m interested in how you two have made it work.
Eight years ago, we received the perfect wedding gift from a couple we know and love: the use of their country home in Ireland for our honeymoon. (For those of you who gave us bullshit toasters and dishtowels and such, no hard feelings.) World travelers that we are, we didn’t expect to fall madly in love with a place reputed to be rainy as fuck. We figured we’d check Ireland off the list, grab the T-shirt, then plan some other international foray in the sun.
Instead, the quiet and the green and the eight-inch-thick grass and the sound of the bees in the trees and the mooing cows in the field and the never-ending sense of magic lured us back time and time again. (It also helps to have really generous friends who hand you the key to their house without so much as blinking an eye. Friends not like me.)
After six years of living off of their largesse, we bought our own home. (Which is a whole nother story.)
Here’s a little glimpse for you so you can see what I mean.
Because, even more alluring than the scenery and the sense of innate peace and the grounded energy that is part of this land, we liked how we operated in Ireland. We liked the way we calmed the hell down. We liked how we were suddenly inclined to chat with random people we met on the road instead of rushing on past; and how we would spend an hour at the grocery store, instead of nipping in and out, because we’d met a neighbor or ten who wanted to gab; or how we’d stop at the top of the hill to listen to the farmer whose property abuts our land tell us a nearly incomprehensible joke, instead of making an excuse to flee back to our comfy lair.
Did I ever mention we’re generally unsociable introverts?
As time has passed, we’ve discovered that we want to be here in Ireland more and more. I mean, a LOT more. Which raises new questions for us, many of them seemingly unanswerable at this point in time.
Some of the questions are logistical: What do we do with our ridiculously huge house in Connecticut? Sell it? Rent it?
Some of them are financial: Do we apply for Irish residency and pay Irish taxes? How would that compare to what we pay in the States?
Some of them are philosophical: Will we eventually miss the culture in which we were raised and want to live full time back in the States amped up on speed?
The questions never seem to end. The minute one is answered, a different one pops up.
Moving back and forth between homes, between countries, requires the ability to stay steady during great uncertainty. You have to get OK with not having the answers when you’d really like them, which is pretty tough for control-freak-security-loving whores like me.
You want to know how we decide when to be in Ireland and when to be stateside? The answer is, we don’t really know. Yet. It’s something that we need to figure out lickety-split because this last minute, back and forth shit can get pretty expensive, not to mention wearing.
Both Walt and I are building international businesses, which makes things even stickier because they often require our physical presence, as opposed to our “online selves”. Gone are the days when Walt’s American gigs dominated the calendar. We’re facing new conundrums: He’s got the sudden opportunity to conduct a series of workshops throughout Ireland while I’ve committed to speaking events in America throughout the fall. If we don’t get better at calendaring, we’re going to be spending an awful lot of time on different sides of the pond, which has never been part of the plan.
A rigorous planning session
The other thing you have to get really good at, if you haven’t noticed, is making choices. You don’t get to do it all, have it all–not all at once anyway–which requires you to get crystal clear on your values and priorities. It requires that you develop a vision and a plan, instead of flying by the seat of your pants, which I’m particularly famous for. Not all people, relationships, events, or opportunities are created equal. Some things need to fall by the wayside in order to make room for those that matter most. And that takes some thought. And guts. Because what if you choose wrong?
I’ll spare you the catastrophic thinking for just once.
I’ve always been a huge fan of books about folks who chuck it all and move to a foreign country. I loved Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence and Frances Mayes’ Under the Tuscan Sun. Two authors with such a sense of adventure, courage, and humor, all requirements, in my mind, for navigating a non-English speaking foreign culture. (Living in Iran wasn’t nearly as charming or hysterically funny, by the way.) How could you not be inspired to take the leap, particularly when the kids are grown, the husband is gone, and you’ve got a nest egg in the bank or a location-independent job?
Single at sixty? I’d take Florence over Farmington any ole day. But that’s just me. And Peter. And Frances.
The uncertainty stuff, the choosing thing, they’re both a small price to pay for living in a place that gives you peace and joy.
