4 Common Life Struggles + Updates

It doesn’t matter how successful you become, what matters is the person that you are.

This year has been my toughest yet and I had no choice but to cut back on blogging. I had to be MIA several times. More than I wanted. Each time, it broke my heart more and more to be away from my passion and most of all, you guys!! With God’s grace, guidance and the above quote I happened to hear somewhere, it really made me feel that I was doing the right thing by focusing on my family, first and foremost.

There have been countless times that I wanted to share all the details with you guys, but just couldn’t. Time wouldn’t allow it, or I just felt so down, stressed and exhausted from the chaos that surrounded me. There were several massively daunting life tasks that needed to get addressed. The ones you know you have to do, but can’t get away with not doing them, and you just know they will take up all your time, energy and maybe even a little bit of your sanity… so today I’m sharing some common life struggles. Have you experienced any of them?

1. Selling My Parents House

Doesn’t sound too bad right? Well, everything was worst case scenario on this one, until it sold. Hallelujah! I won’t bore you guys with every detail but to sum it up … My family lives abroad in Europe (house was in LA) and a while back they had signed another family onto the Title of the property. The property was large enough for 2 families to live on it. However, something or another happened between my parents and this family and things got totally out of hand. The 50/50 interest there once was, was no longer there and my family felt it was time to sell and split ways. After being on the market for over 100 days, a fair offer came in and they accepted. Between everyones interests and worldly whereabouts, it made escrow a total nightmare. I was involved as a Realtor, a daughter and friend. There was no way I wasn’t going to be there for my family. This was a big deal.

I referred the property to a local LA Brokerage since my license only covers the Central Coast, but that didn’t stop anyone from calling and involving me in every detail 24/7. It took me away from blogging for a good 3 months. Though I continued to post on Instagram. Escrow was about 60 some days and then I took about 3 weeks off to help my parents pack up the house. We had SO much to filter through, sell, donate and pack. We all got together and worked tirelessly each waking hour, and we only were able to get about 4 hours of sleep a night. Definitely not ideal. My parents, my brother, his girlfriend, my husband and I, we were all tight on time and the close date. Towards the end, my parents had to fly back to Europe and a few more days of work was left for me to finish the rest off. Everyone else had 9-5 office jobs sooo, well you know how that goes. I was there finishing up the packing/cleaning and John called into his work to request some time off to help me. That was the sweetest, I LOVE MY HUSBAND!

5 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, with over 4,000 sq. ft. of living space. The views were amazing!

At this point it was already April, and we took a trip to Mexico to relax from the crazy start to the year. I cannot wait to go back you guys!! We stayed at Marquis Los Cabos and it was excellent! Wonderful in every imaginable way, as a getaway should be!

2. Selling Our House

In late April and May we were doing work on our house to get it prepped for sale. We’ve always wanted to move out of our house (since 2015 actually), but it never was the right time. Truth is, the more you dread doing something, the sooner you should do it! Not joking!! We felt that we had completed the remodel on our house and we were ready to move on. We weren’t happy with our town (Arroyo Grande, CA) and needed a change ASAP. We had a nicely sized home but it felt too big for us. To paint the picture a little better our yorkie had his own bedroom (and bed)! Also, it was 3 stories tall and canopied by 70-80 year old oak trees that surrounded the property. It’s the perfect house if you live somewhere where it gets super hot. Or if you like being under a natural AC all the time, lol. But it was too chilly for us in this beach town a day-to-day basis. So in the mean time we were exploring a world of options and where we wanted to live. Having lived in beautiful places such as Italy, Switzerland, France and Bulgaria, we were sooo attracted to the idea of moving  abroad to Europe. We explored every avenue fully, but decided that we wanted to make Europe our 3-6 months-out-of-the-year home instead. I know we sound so spoiled when we say this, but we’re still dreaming of getting to that point one day, so please let us #DREAM 🙂

Our house sold in August. I took another 3 weeks or so away from blogging to get us moved out, but this time John wasn’t able to take time off. Luckily, we had some extra help from family and friends and we made-do! At this point, we still had no idea where we were going to live.

3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms with over 2,000 sq. ft. of living space. Had amazing views! Forever our first home <3

3. Now Where To Live?

We started looking into states such as Texas, Carolinas, Oregon, Washington … There was nothing stopping us from moving out-of-state. We felt so over living in California for many reasons. Being the type A that I am, I spent SO much time gathering info on each state, multiple cities, towns. Basically weighing out the pros and cons – even finding properties we’d consider buying. We approached it as, “let’s just explore and see where we end up.”

However, deep inside I was an anxious wreck. Having gone through so much in 2018, I felt anxious and stressed out mainly because I couldn’t do it all myself. Just the thought of moving out of state made me super anxious because how could I relocate us and still be able to run my business?! John was working so much, and I couldn’t really rely on him being available for any crazy life adventures of the sort. I felt so alone. Believe me when I say this, I always try to be superwoman and do it all 🙂  I would sleep 2-4 hours a night just to try and get everything done. What ended up happening is I was taking away too much time from myself to give it elsewhere, and that didn’t end up well. I really put my well-being on the line. The hardships of 2018 humbled me, and I had to face one grueling fact: I’m only human and have 24 hours in a day. I should probably spend 7-8hrs of them sleeping. Lol. Pretty easy right?! It’s just as easy to forget these things when you’re caught up with 289,701 tasks all at once.

It wasn’t until we took a road trip to explore all of Oregon to come back and really appreciate California for the amazing state that it is. I’ve never lived in another US state, outside of CA. And though we enjoyed SO MANY cities in Oregon, it just didn’t feel right to move there. I mean, how do you just move to someplace and leave behind all family and friends? My parents did it when they moved continents, but they knew somebody here. And knowing one person, is so much better than knowing no-one. We didn’t fall in love hard enough and didn’t know anyone well enough living there to make the change. Plus, we visited Oregon at the worst possible time. The fires up there were INSANE, and we felt like God was telling us, “this isn’t your state, go home!” By this time we had already spent years praying to the Lord to guide our steps. He knew what we needed and the desires of our hearts. We promised each other that whatever doors open, we would know, and go fully into that direction.

4. Moving In With Family (temporarily)

We made the decision to remain on the Central Coast but change cities. We were looking for something very, very specific in a city that’s super competitive to find anything in. We made dozens of offers, no doors were opening but we were determined. By mid August, we were without a place to live.

If you live on the Central Coast, you know how difficult it can be to find a nice, clean month-to-month rental with a pet. Nearly impossible. The best we were able to find was an Airbnb per month, but tiny studios with a pet allowance would run as much as an entire house if not more. And cuz of what we wanted to do next, we knew we should spend more wisely. We felt that we were sooo close to finding our next house, and opted to stay with my in-laws. Though looking back on it now, it was not the most ideal situation for us. Some unnecessary family drama suddenly erupted and we knew we had to resolve our living situation right away. I won’t get into any details but staying with family made our already-tough situation so much more stressful.

So we booked 3 weeks away and headed to Europe. Right before we left WE FOUND OUR HOUSE!! That’s right!! We still can’t believe it!! God answered SO MANY of our prayers with this house!! Good things come to those who HUSTLE and BELIEVE!! I cannot wait to share this next exciting journey with you guys!!

Can any of you guess where it is?? 🙂

I’ll be sharing all about our NEW HOUSE in my next blog post! Stay tuned loves!!

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xx Adelina