“Where do you see yourself in 5 years?”

I’ve been asked this question in almost every job interview I’ve had, and I’m sure I’m not alone. I’ve worked on crafting the answer to that question for the past few years. Usually, I’ve kept it very broad. Sometimes, I’ve outright responded with “Working for your company”. It’s taken every fiber of my being not to follow that with a smile and a wink at the interviewer, cheeky little shit that I am. Teehee, I’m so clever.

Most importantly, though, I’ve learned that there’s no specific answer. Who knows exactly where any of us are going to be in that amount of time? Who can predict that with absolute certainty? Yes, I know that interviewers aren’t expecting you to say precisely where you’ll be. They’re smart people; they know better. They ask that to find out what your ambitions are, what goals you’ve set, or if you have a general idea, at least. They want to see if you’ve thought about your professional future.

I, of course, have definitely thought about aspects of my future, whether they’re in regard to my career, my marriage, and my family, among many other things. Part of that includes considering where in the world I might end up one day. Kevin and I both felt that we weren’t going to live in New Hampshire forever, probably not in the Northeast as a whole. But we expected to spend maybe another couple of years there.

So I was surprised, yet totally excited, to move to Arizona.

I don’t want to say too much about what got us to this point for the sake of privacy. However, I can tell you about everything else that surrounded yet another moving experience in my life.

I wasn’t kidding about being surprised. I don’t think we were totally thrown for a loop, though we were pretty shocked. You know that feeling when you haven’t heard back from someone in a while, and you don’t think they picked you? So you start to handle the rejection and move on with your life? Well… that’s kind of where we were at when Kevin got a phone call, and everything proved to be the opposite. We found out that we had been wrong. They had chosen Kevin after all.

They wanted us in Arizona in a month’s time. That’s less than what we were given for the first cross-country move, and this move would take us 1,000 miles farther, too. We had to get everything together in a hurry.

We worked with a moving company again. A lot of the process was similar to last time. Someone came to our place and surveyed all of our household items, estimating how much weight our belongings would be on a truck. He ended up being wildly inaccurate, but I suppose it’s better to overestimate than come up short. The moving company scheduled a date to pack us up, and it sent a group of guys to get everything squared away.

The movers didn’t just bring a U-Haul or Penske truck like they did the first go-round; normally, they use one of those to get your stuff to a distribution center, where it’s then loaded onto a much larger truck. Oh no… this group brought the whole damn semi! It was sort of hilarious to see that giant thing taking up so much space on our narrow street.

And I though parallel parking in my car was bad…

It turns out we were only 1 of 6 shipments, and this truck was headed to California, dropping them all off along the way.

Men were in and out of the apartment for most of the day, wrapping everything in paper, shoving it all into boxes, and carrying them out. They loaded them up along with Kevin’s motorcycle and the couch, covering those in blankets and padding. In hindsight, none of this precaution is enough. Anything is liable to break, snap, or get damaged in some way.

Once all was said and done, we were left in our apartment with just one room full of belongings, things that the movers couldn’t take with them (aerosol cans, other flammables, food) and things that we didn’t want them to take (valuables and such). The rest of the apartment was bare. Another company came in the following days to load up our cars and ship those as well. Kevin and I didn’t trust either of our cars to make such a long trip, even though we drove his car last time. We rented a van this time, and that actually turned out better than both of us thought.

We took off from Manchester early in the afternoon. We had a long drive ahead of us, easily taking us past sunset. With all of the backseats folded down, all of our most important possessions sitting right behind us, we hit the road. Our last trip took us from Colorado, through Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Vermont, to New Hampshire. This trip took us farther south, going from New Hampshire, through Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico, to Arizona.

We went to a couple of national parks, Shenandoah in Virginia and Hot Springs in Arkansas. I got to show Kevin one of my childhood homes, this one being in Little Rock. We were able to visit and spend the night with friends in Dallas. We rolled through Albuquerque, saw family and friends, and ended up on the field for opening day of Balloon Fiesta. We couldn’t have asked for better weather and timing if we tried.

I mean… nothing compares to this!

After over a week on the road, when Kevin and I arrived in Arizona, we were set up in a hotel suite until we found a new place to live. That had its own pros and cons, yet it ultimately worked out really well. We had an apartment locked down in a couple of weeks.

You want to know one big difference between this move and the last one? I didn’t regret leaving New Hampshire like I did leaving Colorado. I didn’t feel bad. We did so much on the east coast, thanks in no small part to the 52 Weeks of Adventure we undertook. There were certainly some things we missed out on; we couldn’t possibly see it all in a little over a year. But we absolutely spent our time there more effectively, getting out and seeing different places, trying new activities, and of course, continuing to do things that we love to do.

Honestly, though, I’m glad to be back in the Southwest. I couldn’t be happier to live so close to my family and friends again. And we can get out and do whatever we want in another brand-new location! I must say: Arizona wasn’t on my shortlist of states I expected to end up in. Yet in the past 2 years, I’ve now moved 3 times, twice across the country.

Where do I see myself in the next 5 years? Literally anywhere. Anything is possible!