A few months ago I was mourning the cold weather in a particular blog post, and a reader named Whitney, in a comment, asked this:
“Yeah I’m sorry. It’s a beautiful day in AZ today. There is a beautiful breeze. Not too hot but not too cold. I’m not trying to rub this in your face I’m only trying to help you feel like you’re here. I don’t understand why Poor Kyle can’t bring you back home. Whats up with that? Should I post that in one of your question posts? Why don’t you live here Camille? What’s keeping you from making PK get a job in AZ?”
Answer:
First off, Whitney, thanks for commenting. I appreciate all my readers, and cherish each comment I am given. I write this blog for you. Secondly, you ask me why I don’t make PK get a job in Arizona, as if you think I have any pull at all. Wrong. I have no clout. I’ve tried nagging; I’ve tried whining; I’ve tried withholding; I’ve tried sending him to bed with no dinner. At the end of the day, however, Poor Kyle is quite a bit more stubborn than me, and I have learned there is no way I can make him do something he doesn’t want to do. And anyway, I don’t really want to be that kind of wife. I make an honest effort to share decision-making with Poor Kyle, rather than take over {or let him walk all over me}.
However, Poor Kyle’s stubbornness has nothing to do with us living in Canada—he would move to Arizona in the time it takes to say, “Like the desert missed the rain,” if it was feasible. As would I.
Unfortunately, Poor Kyle has no secondary education or backup career plan aside from his current job—a job which, gratefully, he enjoys. He doesn’t like school (I don’t blame him), and has no interest in continuing his education {which is where my stance as a laissez-faire sort of wife comes into play}. I am not going to force him to pursue an education or a career in something he’s not interested in, nor would he ask me to do so.
His same career in Mesa would pay substantially less, with fewer days off per year and 100% not as many perks. So unless we wanted our parents to support us, and/or live on a bench in Pioneer Park, there’s no way we can live comfortably in Arizona right now—and we’re all about living comfortably. It sounds greedy or money-hungry, but it’s so obvious: why would we choose to be poor when there’s another option, and one that doesn’t involve robbing banks? If you could work at something you enjoyed and make a decent living doing it…well…wouldn’t you do it?
That’s not to say we’re rich; sometimes we have to eat cereal without milk, but we are fighters.
I can’t say exactly what our future holds, but I can assure you that if or when the opportunity arises, we would surely jump at the chance to live in Arizona.
My only hope is to make scads of money writing so that we can live anywhere in the world and still make millions. That way, Arizona would be a shoe-in.
Of course, every aspiring blogger and Literature major in the free world hopes the same thing for their lives, and I’m no better than any of them…
…so for now I’ll keep on keepin’ on in the land of the freezing and the home of the brrrrr.
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