My wife Debra Jean and I rescinded our pledges to NH FSP.
http://forum.freestateproject.org/index.php?topic=16876.0
While that may smack of "not keeping your word", we feel it's totally keeping our word, as opposed to staying pledged and then never moving there.
Wyoming is just making a lot more sense to us. Especially after further research and soul searching. Also influential was that after I announced on here that we were going to move to NH instead, no one slammed us, several here were still polite to us, and Boston signed a copy of Molon Labe to me "We'll miss you in Wyoming." I was very touched by that.
While there are some great people on the NH board who I like a lot, even as a pledged member I found myself frequently defending myself against several others who basically believe the same things I believe, but wanted to argue over some minutia. Or just argue.
To avoid rescinding anything going forward, we're not going to pledge to WY FSP until we've visited the state and met some members in person. We want to meet you, and I assume as potential members, you'll want to meet us.
DJ (Debra Jean) visited Yellowstone a couple times as a kid with her parents and loved it, and I had dinner at a truck stop near Gillette while passing through, but that's pretty much our hands-on experience with the state. (Whereas I used to summer in NH, DJ's never been there.) We need to see, touch, sniff the lay of the land in person before making a pledge to a place that we intend to be where we'll spend the rest of our lives. We think that's the sane way to do it.
So, Debra Jean has vacation this year from May 23-June 6th. Both of our birthdays happen in that window too, so that will add to the fun of the trip. We plan on spending a healthy portion of that time checking out Wyoming. We figure two days each way to drive there with resting, and about five days in WY.
We'd love to meet some of you and have dinner and maybe a shoot. (We've never touched a battle rifle, and I'll admit it up front, DJ's a much better shot than me with the sidearm and Marlin 60 "bunny gun." We both practice as much, but she's more a natural. Cindy from Appleseed told me "Don't worry, your wife can protect you." lol...)
If we love it in Wyoming, we hope to be able to move sometime between 18 months and 3 years from now. It will involve selling our house, finding a WY house (with a little land), tying up loose ends, and finding DJ employment.
I write and can do my work from anywhere, but Debra Jean has a good job here in SoCal, with good pay and perks. We've thought of things she could do in WY for work. Basically it boils down to:
-- Working in an office in WY as a paralegal (don't know yet if there's much work for that, but she has 15 years at the same job, is really good at it, and can get awesome letters of recommendation).
-- Working in an office as an executive assistant or administrative assistant. She'd be great at it, though she is overqualified.
-- Telecommute as a paralegal (unlikely that would happen).
-- Telecommute doing editing and proofreading. (She's really great at it, but it's hard to get work. We're going to work on getting her work doing that, from here in SoCal, starting now.)
-- Telecommute doing voiceover. (She's really great at it, but it's hard to get work. We're going to work on getting her work doing that, from here in SoCal, starting now.)
-- Starting something new that she'd love to do, that might not make any money for a while (raising dogs comes to mind).
Thoughts on all of this post are invited and welcome.
Thank you,
MWD & DJD
