There are days where I get a lot done. I feel good about my decision to be self-employed during this time in my life. I write. I read. I cook and take photos. I clean and do laundry. I work with Cave Girl clients. I write some more. There is time to go to the gym and there is time to think about dinner and there is time to talk to my friends, online and now on the phone, something I barely found time for before this. I hang out with new friends and I do yoga headstands in my living room. I love my blog and the apartment is organized and I'm just so happy.

And there are days where I don't get a lot done. I feel panic about life and my decision to be unemployed during this time. I randomly apply for jobs. I don't write. I wonder where more Cave Girl clients can be found. I think about essays I want to get on paper and then practically watch them float right out of my head and to wherever it is that good ideas go to die. I spend a lot of time watching a capella groups on YouTube. I leave laundry in the dryer for a week. I don't plan dinner. I decide not to go to the gym and then beat myself up over all the time I have and how little I am doing with it. I feel like Rob and I are alone in this city and I hate my blog and there's crap all over the floor and I just feel so anxious.

I think the biggest struggle so far has definitely been in learning to be kinder to myself. In learning to accept this season as the huge blessing that it is. In trying to be successful, whatever that might mean; and trying not to feel like a failure, whatever that might mean. To feel lucky and blessed, but to do it without guilt.

Rob has been so wonderfully supportive. When I panic and apply for fifteen random jobs I find on Craigslist (this happens more often than I'd like to admit), he tells me that if I want to get a job while we're here, I should get one, but to remember that it might get in the way of my goals to do other things this year. And it's true. With the uncertainty of how long we'll be here and where we'll go next (not to mention the two weeks I'm planning to spend in Virginia for Thanksgiving, closely followed by ten days for Christmas), it's hard to be taken seriously in an interview.

I managed to get in touch with a staffing agency who is starting to throw part-time gigs my way, which will give me a reason to dress up and get out of the house while simultaneously making a little money. Offices need receptionists and copywriters, and I have pretty free afternoons most of the time. My blog has been paying my student loans since August, which was a huge goal I made before I moved and actually sometimes can't believe I'm meeting, but it will feel good to contribute something more to our household income.

Moving to Minnesota felt like it would be the end of a huge transition, but I'm starting to accept the fact that life is just a series of changes. One day I might wake up and feel like my feet are finally firmly planted where they're supposed to be, but I know it won't be tomorrow, and I think that's okay.

Photo credit: V.A. Photography

I got out of the shower yesterday and smeared some lotion that I barely ever use over my shoulders and arms. It's that thick body cream that comes in a tub instead of a bottle, and it smells like cake. I bought it at the Bath & Body Works in Tyson's Corner one weekend with Melissa and Whitney when Rob was living there and I was visiting.

It smells like winter to me, that lotion, so once I put it on I crossed my arms over my face and breathed in deeply, remembering the really tall but wobbly air mattress we used to sleep on and the kitchen with barely anything in it that he shared with two other guys. Chilly afternoons with friends and dinners out in DC, loud bars at Halloween and high heels at holiday parties, sad Sunday afternoons filled with naps and extra kisses and four hour drives into the night.

They were days full of friends and full of fun, but they were days that sometimes felt as though they'd never end; like we'd always be separated by our jobs and the cities we lived in.

But now we have this place together, and though it sometimes also feels transitional, there are flowers in vases and all of my books are on a shelf and we share a car and say things like, "What do you want to do for dinner?" because after a day of work, we are together. And I wake up on Sunday mornings with nowhere to go and I put water on the stove for coffee and think, this is our life. And it is so good.

Rob and I got in the car on Saturday morning and set out to visit a new city. It's so weird to look at a map and discover the new places that are now just a long-ish drive away from your home. I'm so used to getting in the car and going to Charlottesville for the day or DC for the weekend, and it was fun to realize that, for a few hours more than it takes to get from Roanoke to Washington, we could be in Chicago.

On Saturday night we had a romantic dinner at a really cool sushi restaurant before seeing Phoenix play at The Aragon, and then we woke up on Sunday morning and sat outside with coffee at Intelligentsia. It felt like any other trip until we got to Millennium Park, where I unexpectedly got emotional at the sight of that huge bean.

Rob and I are a thousand miles from everything we know, and never in my wildest dreams did I think that we'd be so far from home. Minneapolis was never on my list of places to live, and Chicago wasn't even on my list of places to visit, and yet, standing there in Millennium Park with my hand in Rob's, looking at myself in the reflection of the sculpture, things suddenly felt like they were exactly the way they should be.

We stopped for a delicious lunch at Primehouse before heading back home. We got burgers with truffle fries and I had a Bloody Mary. Rob got an "Over Drive," which was a carrot-orange-ginger juice with vodka. It came in a cute little carafe and it was so good.

I'm obviously not that adventurous if I think that spending a weekend in one of the United States' largest cities is some kind of defining moment, but something happened while we were roaming the streets of Chicago. The weather was perfect and the sky was bright blue and I shed a bit of anxiety. I felt a bit more like myself (or maybe just the person I'd like to be), and I felt even more thankful for this man--the tall one who isn't afraid to drive in traffic--and for this life we're doing together.