If you live anywhere on the northern half of the East Coast, then you heard about Winter Storm Kenan, a nor’easter turned “bomb cyclone”, pub crawling its way up the coast Friday through Saturday night. We’ll talk about that in a minute. First, I want to share that after I posted last week about my dance journey currently not including a whole lot of dancing, I got to dance for 2.5 hours on Monday!

Since moving here, I’ve been able to connect with a few other dancers who, like myself, want to continue challenging themselves technically and creatively in their dancing. Monday was our first meetup where we played around with choreography for an hour before my 90-minute ballet class. By the end of the evening, my body was tired and sore, and my soul was happy. We’re aiming to continue our Monday dance sessions, weather permitting.

Speaking of weather, the storm showed up in my area Saturday morning and hung out all day, bringing a ton of wind and snow. The whiteout conditions were intense. Thankfully, we never lost power.

Saturday morning Zumba class was naturally cancelled. I thought about bringing up a dance fitness video on YouTube, but when it’s snowing sideways, I tend to curl up under a blanket with something on Netflix. I have to shovel out the entrance to the stables anyway, so I can get my car out for dance tomorrow. It was probably good to chill yesterday. Between shoveling today and dance tomorrow, I’ll get my exercise!

My dogs haven’t experienced this much snow before (it measured about 10 inches on the ground this morning). They didn’t understand how to move through it at first, so they just sat down. Poor things couldn’t figure out where to go to the bathroom either (they did eventually). Welcome to Maine, boys!

I continue to be surprised at how well I’m taking the winter weather. I don’t like the cold, never have. Here, I still don’t like the cold, but dealing with it doesn’t take as much emotional and mental energy as usual. I credit the fact that I’m so happy living here, an inconvenience like single digit temperatures or blizzard-level winds doesn’t bring my mood down as far as it would if I was starting from a less-than-happy place. Plus, you just can’t beat these views.

This week marks a year since my first house-hunting trip to Maine, and six months since I moved. I’ve learned a lot in the past year, mainly to trust my intuition when it comes to making decisions about where I want my life to go. I spent so much of my life making decisions based on what others expected of me or what I thought I was ‘supposed’ to do. There were also a lot of decisions based on what I thought I wanted, but looking back, what I thought I wanted had a lot to do with what I thought others wanted or what I thought I was supposed to do.

I’d say I wish I knew then what I know now, but I suspect that the only reason I know now is because of all the nonsense I went through while not knowing. Maybe not. Maybe we make things difficult and Life torturous because we think that’s how it’s supposed to be. Maybe Life is actually hard, but it’s our perspective of that challenge that determines how much we suffer or struggle. Things to ponder during a blizzard. 😉

I’m sure that Life has not become less challenging in the past year. In some ways, it’s become more challenging! But I am also enjoying Life sooooo much more than I was before. Despite the challenges, I’m far less stressed. I’m happier. I consciously chose the direction that this chapter of my life would take, which I’m realizing was a pretty radical thing to do. Apparently, not everyone would move to the opposite corner of the country because they were called there by some internal force.

The result could have been disastrous. I could have moved and hated it here. And at the same time, I don’t think so, as long as I listened to that inner voice. My intuition was too strong and clear; I knew I was meant to be here. I didn’t know where in Maine exactly. Other external forces limited my search area (budget, internet availability, travel time to family). Anywhere along the way, I could have stopped listening to my intuition and made a decision based on those external factors. The house I ended up in did not match the initial search parameters. It was way above budget and in need of more work than I thought I wanted to take on. But the energy of the land was amazing; it was hard to leave the property after the house tour. Still, the search continued and other possibilities came and went. Offers on other houses were made and fell through. I wondered if I’d ever find my Maine home. This house somehow remained on the market, as if it was waiting. My intuition kept nudging me back to it, making sure I didn’t forget. Finally, a price drop took the house from “way above budget” to just “above budget but we could make it work.” An internal bell rang – it was time to act.

I understand why most people don’t rely on their intuition. It’s not easy! It takes a tremendous amount of self-trust, and we’re taught throughout our lives that we are not trustworthy by constantly being required to prove to others who we are and what we can do. Our intuition is often muddled by external voices or internal fears; it can be incredibly difficult to distinguish what we truly want from our fears and others’ expectations. Sometimes the timing comes separately from the thing we want. I knew I wanted to move out of Southern California a year and a half before I finally arrived at my new home in Maine. Sometimes the thing we want takes time to fully reveal itself. I spent months thinking I wanted to move to Oregon or Colorado or even Northern California. Maine kept popping up throughout my research of other areas. I had to go through considering those other locations before it became clear to me that Maine was the answer.

Self-trust comes up a lot in dance too. I held myself back in my beginning ballroom years because I didn’t trust myself to be able to go full out. Eventually, with a lot of practice and a lot of fumbles, I grew that trust and, just like what happened with Maine, I became a much happier dancer.

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On that happy note, I’m going to bid you farewell for now and go shovel some snow! If you enjoyed this article, please show your support via Ko-Fi. You can contribute monthly like a magazine subscription, or just make a one-time tip. Either way, thank you for your support!

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