Looking forward to a real couch and our future

February 18, 2021

We had a chat on this little love seat last night.

We don’t own a couch. We haven’t had a couch for almost 6 years. Starting off our life in the city with a single income, not a lot of furniture (from previous successive moves, house-sitting arrangements, and purges of possessions), and a laundry list of other financial priorities, a couch just never made it on the “must-buy” list.

We found the 2 seater loveseat in a trash pile, rescued it and threw a blanket over it, bought bean bags, and added a couple POANG IKEA chairs (one also rescued from the roadside) and called it “good enough” for the time being. A time being of almost 6 years.

We sat on this little loveseat last night and talked about long-term dreams and goals for the next couple years.

For most of our nearly 6 years of living in Montreal we’ve been attending to bringing one dream through to completion. Raising a family was a 20+ year long project for us, that was once upon a time just a dream. A dream that came true with a bit of luck in the fertility department, followed by a huge investment of time, resources, and energy.

We’ve been scheming new dreams for a couple years now. Seeing the end of one chapter, and the beginning of the next, on the horizon. The pandemic stole the global show in 2020 but we made steady progress on individual and family goals and we find ourselves in 2021 in a new space - financially and vocationally.

We’ve paid off a significant debt (slow & steady), we got all the kids into post-secondary (which they are funding themselves), I’ve retired from homeschooling, I have steady part-time employment (with a raise in Jan), I returned to school to position myself for a midlife-start paying career, and Damien has moved up the ranks in responsibility and remuneration in his employment.

Which is to say, we’ll finally be getting an honest-to-goodness couch this year! And a few more “things”.

As soon as this blasted pandemic ends, we’ll travel somewhere significant to celebrate and honor some midlife milestones. And we’ll start saving for that cabin in the woods, which is to be the home following this particular time and space. The years we raised three teens into young adults and launched our midlife dreams.

Originally published on Instagram