Sarah Morgan
This is another in the You Write the Title series, and was suggested by MattHall.
I feel like my life is an embarrassment of riches. I don’t do everything right, and I’m definitely not perfect, and there are things I want to do and achieve in life. But holy heck, am I lucky. In who I know, in what I have – I’ve been so blessed. One of those ways is in where I’ve ended up. That was definitely not engineered by me, and very much qualifies as hitting the jackpot.
My parents got divorced as I was finishing college, and afterward, my father found a place to live an hour away from where he was intending to move. We thought he was a little nuts because it was so far away from where he wanted, and it was – say it with me – “out in the middle of nowhere”. It was really pretty, though, and it was by a couple of relatives who’d gone out there to save on housing prices, so it made sense. And so he made that his home, and the years went by, and he settled in, and eventually fell in love and remarried, to someone who’d lived in that area for decades.
During this time, I’d been planning my own future and saving up for it, but – as life does – that didn’t work out according to plan. I reeled from that for a little while, but when I picked myself up and dusted myself off, I decided I wanted to find my own home – to be all mine – and I made a list. (Me making a list is going to be surprising to exactly nobody. I know this.) There were about a dozen items on the list: things I wanted in the place that would be my home. Armed with that, I marched out with an agent and started… well, I started getting depressed.
No place had what I wanted. It would have a couple of things, but then there would be some glaring negative that made it impossible. A beautiful little apartment – right on a screamingly loud highway. A cute place – in a completely unsafe area. A lovely neighborhood – but a totally soulless box of a home.
Then my father and I met for dinner and chatted about our lives. I was bemoaning the long search and the lack of good options. Where would I find my new little home? He was getting ready for his wedding and trying to figure out whether he wanted to rent out his condo. What would he do with his little home? A light bulb probably actually appeared over the table, the epiphany was so obvious.
I checked my list, and it hit every mark but one: location. It was “out in the middle of nowhere”, right? But it knocked everything else out of the park. So I ended up “out in the middle of nowhere”. But I found out that it wasn’t nowhere after all. It had wonderful neighbors and good friends and beautiful views and lots to do and great restaurants and, before I knew it, it was home.
Yes, I hit the jackpot – in the middle of nowhere.
