Questions for someone who moved to Alaska

December 15, 2016

[caption id=“attachment_686” align=“aligncenter” width=“2048”] Photo by @youngbex[/caption]

Hi it’s Nic.

As always with my on-again-off-again style of maintaining this blog  I’m now back at it again with a new post. I’m eager to get back to writing and feel like I’ve been telling myself the classic story of “too busy: a procrastinators tale” over and over again for the past month and a half now.

I’m structuring this post a little differently than my previous posts. I absolutely cannot afford to give myself the 1-2 hours I usually take to write the blog and ship the blog. Because of this I’ve decided to create a time constraint and a subject constraint to help me communicate as much as possible with as little text as needed.

Today’s blog is brought to you by my good friend Todd Anderson who (without realizing it) reminded me that people out there care and want to know how we are doing with the newly married life, Alaska living, and all of the other craziness that comes with life transitions. He asked a few questions that I feel necessitated a proper response. There are so many people out there who have supported both of us through this transition and so I feel like I owe it to everyone to give you somewhat of an update. I’m giving myself 30-mins. to write it.  Here we go:

How are you?

This is a question I get asked almost every single day, and I think the “canned messages” center of my brain is probably tired of handing out the typical “I’m fine” or “I’m great” responses. My honest to goodness answer when I consider all of the aspects that matter in my life is that it just depends on the day of the week. Dani and I have adjusted well to married life (although I know there’s work on my end to be the man that she needs). Because I’m a new business owner, my mind puts me in a valley in between the: “I’m going nowhere with my life and should probably just work at Starbucks for the rest of my life” and “This is scary but I can really make something of this business if I really go for it.” I think stress bleeds through from this aspect of everything into the rest of my life. Overall things are peachy and I couldn’t be happier to be living with Dani in such a beautiful and dark place of the world.

How’s work?

Ever since March, I have been pushing harder than ever to build my business into this “dream job” I had envisioned when I started the thing off. It’s been 9 months now and I feel like I’m at the place I wanted to be in two weeks when I started. It’s been a personal journey more than anything else and it has been anything but a stable typical job. It’s the “starving artist” lifestyle with the freedom, experiences, pain, and joy that come along for the ride.

Community?

The community in Anchorage is cool. I think something I noticed early on that I really appreciate is that it blends a city with the wildness that occupies the outlying territory. There are ton’s of college kids all super focused on their studies, and at the same time you have people who are working their butts off to come up with something that will stabilize the economy now that the oil industry is not as great for AK as it used to be. Dani and I are apart of the Alaska Chamber Singers which has given us a really cool view inside of some lives that have been here for over 50 years. It’s really amazing to hear some of the history told from someone else’s perspective and then get to look around and imagine how different the territory was when they got here.

Friends?

Dani and I both were really nervous about this when we left. Moving 3000+ miles away from everyone you know, to a place where you only two people is something that neither of us could fully grasp. At first it was just us. On days when one of us would be at home alone we would both experience homesickness and constantly dwell on everything we left. It was out of desperation one Sunday morning that I went and visited a church that happens to be a block away from where we live. It was here that I met most of the people we have grown very close to in a short period of time. I was invited to workout with the group and I just feel like the Father has been answering prayers and needs within my heart left and right.