I love opportunities, but I'm not so fond of making decisions. I'm the type of person who can ponder for many minutes the choice between two different brands of laundry detergent. So you can imagine how bad it is when I am challenged to make a major decision.
We have the opportunity to buy a little hobby farm about 5 miles from our current home. We would, of course, sell our house and move. The benefits include additional income (for reasons I won't get into right now), teaching the kids the value of physical labor and living off the land (to some degree), and the ability to raise all sort of interesting animals, including the beehive I've always wanted. The house is a little smaller than our current home, but the layout would suit our family better. Like our current property, this too is on a lake. No, neither Lisa nor I would leave our current employ.
The downsides include not having close neighbors (some of whom have become close friends), no easy access to the bike path that we use all the time, having to drive a little further to go into "town" (but it's only a couple of miles, really), and the challenge of running another business on top of the vet practice. I also wonder how living in the country would affect the kids. Would they miss not being able to just run over to their friends' house? Would they be too isolated? It's only 10 acres, so it's not in the middle of nowhere or anything, but still...
Lisa and I discuss this all the time, and we go back and forth a lot. We also suffer from some degree of inertia. It would be a huge pain to put our house on the market, especially during this real estate depression.
But is THIS my Next Big Thing? When have I ever shied away from opportunity? We're smart and we know how to work hard; we can make this a good thing.
Ugh. Too much analysis, resulting in, of course, paralysis.
Input would be appreciated, especially from people who have raise a family in a somewhat rural setting.
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