Tip, seesaw, tip

Here's the happy news in the M+T Life Status Report: we are incredibly lucky to have one another, we go home every day to a place that we like and furry friends we love, we have fantastic friends around, and we live in a town that offers more distractions than two people could possibly hope for.

Here's the rest of the Report: Distractions are not enough. And while we are perfectly comfortable here, we go through our days feeling fairly disconnected from what matters most to us, a sentiment that becomes more difficult to stomach as time goes on. Living as far away as we do from our families isn't just an issue of travel or prioritization. It impacts every decision we make, every way we think about our future, and has us in a holding pattern until we can figure out where/when/how to jump start our Real Life. We feel particularly vulnerable after weekends like this one, when we move mountains in order to spend just a couple of precious days with our favorite people, only to know at the end of it that once again, there is just never enough time.

Sometimes I imagine us teetering at the center of a seesaw, waiting for life to tip us in one direction. There is family pressure and a desire to be closer and make life easier on one side. Then on the other side, there's the hope that if we hold out long enough, all the stars might align for us so that a big move will be a bigger professional and financial opportunity than it is a setback. But that seesaw doesn't seem to want to tip either way, and so we remain distracted.

We've reached that precarious point in the year when we admit to ourselves that we will be here for another season. And again, this is not a bad thing, just more teetering in the center. So all the concerts we bookmarked for fall not knowing whether we'd be here or not, we can now buy tickets for. And all the trips we have planned for fall, we can go ahead and book them departing from DFW. Time marches on, whether we're calling it our Real Life or not. But as for when a progression of the calendar will feel like an actual step forward... that remains to be seen.

Scenes from our happy table at The Place this weekend: