Making Things Happen!

Our adventure is just about underway!

The focus of this blog is to document our one-year adventure living in a small coastal community in Sonoma County. Yep, we are temporarily leaving "America's Finest City" to test drive a more rural life". We are heading to The Sea Ranch. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Ranch,_California Why, you might ask? I'll go into those details in a later blog, but for now ... on with the planning.

Our current target date is August 1, 2010! As we sat down to figure out how to make this all happen, here were some of the key issues

• Work
• What to do with our house in San Diego
• Finding a place to live.

I'll address the work issue in this post and follow up on the other issues in subsequent posts.

Work. Bob and I both enjoy the kind of work that we do and wondered how that would translate to moving out of San Diego. Could we work out a deal with our employers? Or would we have to leave our jobs behind and try the self-employmen route or a career switch?
After a decade as a talented game programmer with Sony, Bob decided to make the leap to a small start up in San Francisco that supported his goal of working remote. Bob is now reaching the six-month point at his new job and is up to speed on all the pluses and minuses of working from home. He flies up to San Francisco once a month, which is where the office is located, and finds it a nice distraction. He's now a pro at packing light, Southwest schedules, BART and MUNI.

I was a little more concerned about my job. It work for a large engineering firm doing environmental analysis work and project management. My work is specific to California, and I was not sure where my company would stand on a remote arrangement. Well, after much nervousness and anxiousness, I approached my boss and my boss' boss and told them my plans. I am happy to report they were very open to it and said they would work with me so that I would stay an employee of the company. I will stay affiliated with our San Diego office, but work remote/from home. We do have a few offices in the Bay Area, should I need to make an occasional trip into an office (still a 2+ hour drive though). Guess all those long hours and being a good employee paid off. Seriously though, I am thrilled to work with people who are being flexible with my work arrangement so Bob and I can try this out. Needless to say, getting our work situations settled was a huge relief.