Hindsight is 50/50
We’re moving back to Naples!
That’s the good news.
The rest of it—selling our beautiful new house, leaving our neighbors, needing to find a new house as home prices continue to climb, wondering if we maybe shoulda just stayed put all along—leaves us with some doubts about our decision-making.
The truth is: we don’t know if we made a good move or a bad move.
We met some great new people as a result of having moved to Tampa ever-so-briefly. Matt gained valuable work experience—work experience that quite possibly put him in the position to be recruited by his new employer. I wrote (and rewrote) a great many pages sitting in my window-filled office room.
But did we really need to build a house? Should we have just used the big bookcase we already owned rather than having those floor-to-ceiling shelves installed?
And the pool—I mean the unfinished concrete hole in the ground…
Let me just say (because life is ironic and cruel) the week the pool company started digging the hole in our yard was the same week that recruiter called Matt.
Knowing what we know now, we probably should have cancelled that contract and been out our $5000 deposit and not the much, MUCH bigger number we’re actually in for.
Or maybe the pool will wind up being a good return on investment… who knows?!?
We don’t know.
Naples prices have skyrocketed since we left. Does that feel like a barrier to re-entry? Yes. Are we suddenly considering neighborhoods we dismissed seven years ago when we were first house-hunting here…? Maybe.
Could we even afford to buy our old house back? Probably not.
But Naples feels like home.
And Matt’s new job is really exciting.
Our plan (all along) was to get back here—someday. That day just came much sooner than we expected.
Had any other company in any other city called Matt—we’d still be sitting in Valrico, Florida, this morning and you wouldn’t be reading this and I might not be having the heart palpitations that are going to have me calling a doctor just as soon as our new insurance is in place.
