A Fresh Start

Although life has been hectic for me over the last couple of weeks, things are starting to get back to normal...slowly but surely.

We have moved to a new location. And what we thought would be a bit of "stressful" chaos by getting everything packed and then just do the move...turned out to be much more chaotic and stressful than what we imagined.

But hey, we approached this whole "moving project" as a physical step towards a new start in life.

I won't go into all the detail in this post but in short...

Back in 2003, I was working for a company in Johannesburg.

They decided to transfer me to Durban, on the East Coast of South Africa. Living by the sea has always been a life-long dream of both me and my wife as we both love the ocean. So, I grabbed the opportunity with both hands.

Yet, about 6 months after I got the transfer, the company went "belly-up" and I obviously lost my job.

My wife obviously also had no job due to the fact that she resigned from the company she had worked for in Johannesburg, to enable us to come to Durban.

We left family, friends, and everything else behind to come down to the coast. So now we had no friends, no family, and suddenly also no income down here at the coast.

Where To Now?

Where to now...? We decided to stay where we were and make the best of it.

Fortunately, my wife was able to find a job. Already being into my 40's at that time, it wasn't so easy to find a job and I started to do whatever I could get my hands on.

We were able to survive and by about 2007 I was able to start a little business of my own. Things started picking up nicely and we were able to rent a house in a nice area.

Then came 2008...and the economy went for a nose-dive. I survived for a while, but financially, I was just not strong enough to survive and we lost just about everything.

Again, doing whatever I could get my hands on, and fortunately, with my wife still having her job, we managed to survive again and remain in the same house.

But, staying in that house wasn't so wonderful after all.

The road which the house is situated on makes a slight bend right in front of the house, and by 2015 we've had five accidents where vehicles caused damage to the fence of our property.

With the last accident, in 2015, two vehicles were involved in a head-on collision and one vehicle came flying through our fence, flattening it to the ground. Fortunately, nobody was seriously injured.

By middle 2017, even though I knew the insurance claim had been paid out, the fence had still not been fixed by the owner of the house. With the fence down, I kept insisting on having it fixed as it was a security risk and I started making it clear that if we would suffer any damage on the property, I would hold the owner and/or the letting agency responsible for any damages.

The fence got fixed, but in such an inferior way that it was an excuse for a fence.

By now, both our daughters were married and obviously left home. Both my wife and I have had enough and got serious about moving out of this house. We also wanted to move into a smaller place.

Yet, I suppose being in somewhat of a "comfort zone", there was no real urgency. We were both unhappy about living there. We've been through some tough times while living there. We had very little (if any) support from the landlord in maintaining the house...and we just wanted to move...but urgh...there is that ugly word..."move".

But, then came 2019, and on 1 February 2019, at 03h00 am, we got attacked inside our house.

We are grateful to still be alive. I was able to fight them off, but I still ended up with a knife-blade that broke off in my face. It had to be surgically removed.

That was the final straw! And the kids wanted us to at least get closer to them as well.

We started looking at buying property together with our oldest daughter and her husband.

We were on the verge of signing a contract to rent a property with the option to buy after one year when Covid-19 struck. It was a nice big house (for my daughter and her family) with a nice 2-bedroom cottage (for me and my wife) on the same property.

But just before everything could be finalized, we went into level-5 lockdown here in South Africa and nothing came of it.

So, life continued and we eventually finally found ourselves in February 2021. As I sat down to have something to drink with my wife, I realized it...we are getting back into that dreaded "comfort zone" again... We are seriously unhappy about where we are living, but what are we doing about it?

I suggested to my wife that we just have a look at some adverts, and start going out over weekends just to see what is available. As I said to her, "As long as we don't do something, nothing is going to happen".

Besides being unhappy with our circumstances, there was no rush. There was no pressure to get out. I felt we could actually use that to our advantage and take our time to look around and find something we like.

We decided to go out and start our "searching adventure/journey" that Saturday.

We responded to an advert of an agent and went out to see our first potential new home. We didn't really like it.

But then, from there, she took us to another house and we (especially my wife) immediately loved the place and we signed a rental agreement. Bonus - It's even closer to the ocean too...lol!

That was just after the middle of February. We immediately started packing. We thought we have so much time, if we start early, it wouldn't be so bad... Oh my! What a surprise?! Especially after 35 years of marriage, and now wanting to go into a smaller place because it's "only the two of us"...

Yes, we've been through some rough times, and we've lost a lot due to it...but that was "big stuff". You don't realize how much of the "small stuff" you still have. Stuff that stayed behind as the kids left home...etc...

Now it was packing, sorting, calling on the kids to see what they still want, making decisions about what will stay and what will go... Middle February to the end of March was all of a sudden not such a long time.

Well, the end of March arrived. We have moved and now we are still unpacking...and deciding what stays and what goes...lol!

But so far...we are over the moon and filled with joy living in our new home!

The plan is to leave the past behind us. We are making a fresh start and looking forward to a brand new, exciting future. And I love the idea of thinking that the Hive blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and communities such as the CTP community, LeoFinance and Proof of Brain community will be a major part of that future.

At the end of April 2021, I will celebrate 1 year of being involved here on the blockchain.

As we get settled into our new home, I am looking forward to getting more active, more involved and learning much, much more about cryptocurrencies, finances, and other topics here on the Hive blockchain.

I believe failure is when you fall and decide not to get up again. But success is not about how many times you fall, it's about how many times you get up!

I realize there are many people out there who have taken much harder knocks in life. But, if there is anyone who feels down at the moment and just needs that final bit of encouragement to "* get-up*" again, I hope this article will encourage you to do so.

Remember: It's not about how many times you fall down, it's about how many times you get up!