My wife and I moved to our little town of Roseburg, Oregon in 2008 after a short few year stint in Portland via Klamath Falls where we grew up.
We’ve been here for 8 years now but being totally honest… we almost moved a few years in.
You see, around 2011 or so I learned a hugely important life lesson that has also turned out to be an amazing business lesson as well.
I call it straddling the line.
Straddling the line is basically having one foot in and one foot out… figuratively speaking of course.
Before we moved to Roseburg we were completely sure what our focus was. Portland was going to be our home for 2.5 – 3 years, just enough for Carly to finish her masters degree then we’d be out. There was no gray area there wasn’t any straddling the line.
So when it came time for us to move we landed in Roseburg. But this time, almost subconsciously, we settled into a weird place in life. Feeling like nowhere was home.
You know that feeling when you’ve been out of town for a while and you’re finally home after a long trip… how you get that warm and fuzzy feeling of being “home”. We had a hard time finding that anywhere.
It was a weird feeling.
That was until 2011 or 2012 we realized this was a big issue. For the past 3 years we’d been looking at other options because they “looked possibly better”. Corvallis, Bend, even(I know, I apologize in advance 😉 Eugene. But none of them were 100% for sure going to make us happier. There were more places to spend our money more easily… but other than that, there weren’t things we could definitely point to and say, “Yep, THIS… this will make us happier”.
But then we asked ourselves an important question.
“We really do like it here in Roseburg. Could this be THE place for us… if we just stop straddling the line? If we stop being mentally one foot in and one foot out?”
And almost right then and there we made that mental decision to step fully across that line and commit to Roseburg as our home.
We’ve never looked back and things have really been amazing since then. We’re no longer straddling the line.
Now around the same time in my life I was straddling the line in business. I owned all or part of 3 (maybe 4, I lose track) companies. It sounds fancy but honestly wasn’t. I was just having a hard time stepping over that line and deciding on one course over the other.
Once I made the decision to stop straddling the line in business too that year, I sold my shares in 2 companies that weren’t fulfilling to me and weren’t a part of my life’s mission. I put my focus onto a new company (Carrot our local software startup), and stepped fully across that line.
Straddling the line no more.
Ever since then, life here in Roseburg has been amazing and Carrot has been on a wild upswing of growth that is fun, profitable, challenging, but very very fulfilling.
So, what things in life are you currently straddling the line on?
What things are you not fully committing to that are weighing you down mentally?
As long as you keep giving yourself that easy mental out and don’t step fully across that line to commit to a path… you’ll probably always feel like something is missing. Like the grass is greener on the other side. Like you can have your cake and eat it too.
Maybe you can. But go ahead and step across that line a try… you may just thank me later for it.