Relocation? Me? Us? What? Why? To Where?

In each individual's life there are several critical choices they make that influence how large portions of their lives will unfold. Similar to the choose your own adventure books that I read as a kid, each choice is a bit uncertain, although some choices are clearly safer than others. If life were a choose your own adventure book, we could make one choice, and then, if unsatisfied by that choice, choose again. However, life does not work that way, thus our choices are much more stressful than those in the books of years gone by.

Enough of the introductory blah, blah, blah. I am currently at the crossroads of a decision that will impact my career, family life, living environment, etc., whether I choose to take action or choose not to. Sure, I've faced these types of decisions before. For example, the decision to attend college, major in psychology, attend graduate school directly out of college instead of working first, begin working for an Insurance company while still between receiving my Masters degree and my Ph.D., get married a couple weeks after September 11, 2001, and have a child. I think the issue with the current decision is that it impacts so many people other than myself, including my wife and child, parents, co-workers and good friends in the area and in other states, soccer teammates, neighbors, etc. The number of factors to weigh is large, and as I am an analytical and critical processor of information by my nature, it is easy to go back and forth based on which particular components of information are most salient at a given point in time.

I can only trust that whatever decision I make will be the best for my family and I. One advantage of life not being like a choose your own adventure book is that there will be no way to go back and find out whether any other alternative would have turned out better. I need to convince myself that once the decision is made, all efforts should be placed into looking forward instead of looking back.

In the near future, when it is safe to do so, I will communicate my decision to the 3 of you reading this. At that time it will, of course, not be new information to any of you. So why the heck did I write this anyway? Well, it served as somewhat of a stress release during my review of relocation processes, Amazon.com's list of books on relocation, and all the other information buzzing about my head.