by Maryanne Pope
After finally leaving my hometown of Calgary – ten years after my husband’s death – to pursue my dream of becoming a “writer by the sea,” I ended up buying a sweet little bungalow in a town by name of “Sidney by the Sea” on southern Vancouver Island.
Sounds idyllic, right? As if all the stars had perfectly aligned after I mustered up the courage to leave a chapter of my life that had closed, so that I could move on to the next chapter…the dream one where I would write in the mornings and take breaks to putter in my pretty little garden, then go for a walk on the beach, then do some more writing…
Perhaps you can hear the birds chirping…or the waves gently lapping against the shore?
Not quite.
My Idealistic Bungalow By the Sea Became a Nightmare
What I actually heard – starting the day after I moved into my sweet little bungalow – was the BOOM, BOOM, BOOM of the base from the stereo next door.
That thumping base became the soundtrack to my life for the next four years.
Yes, you read correctly.
As perhaps you can imagine, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM for eight hours a day is not particularly conducive for writing. Trying to putter in my garden left me a nervous wreck.
For not only was my neighbour’s stereo my constant companion, so, too, were their screaming children, barking dog, relentless bandsaw…and every other form of power tool you could possibly imagine (and some you probably can’t). The only piece of power equipment they didn’t own, oddly enough, was a lawnmower. So when they did get around to mowing their lawn (once or twice a year), they used a weedwhacker.
As a highly sensitive person who needs plenty of peace and quiet – in which to create and recoup – I was a frazzled mess, more often than not.
So perhaps you’re asking, why did I stay for four years? I didn’t. I stayed for SEVEN years.
Yes, you read correctly.
Why? Because I already had moved on, damn it! I’d got the old “nudge from the Universe” to leave Calgary. Surely, I wasn’t supposed to move again? That doesn’t make sense!
“Nope,” I told myself, “I am going to stick this out!”
Why Did I Stop Listening to What the Universe Was Telling Me?
In hindsight, it was shortly after I moved to Sidney by the Sea that I stopped listening to that little voice inside me who would whisper, “Why stay here? You’re not happy, Maryanne. You are anxious, stressed, and frustrated. THIS is not your dream life, either. Sure, now you live near an okay beach…but as a writer, you need quiet, peaceful surroundings.”
Maybe it was relentless boom of the base and buzz of the bandsaw that muffled that little voice?
At any rate, not only did I stop listening to my soul, I did something even dumber: I started to listening to the people around me who said things like, “You better not move. What if you do…and you get even noisier neighbours?!”
Noooo!
Or: “You can’t run away from your karma. You have to learn how to transcend the noise.”
Um, okay.
And so I stayed, stupidly…stuck in Sidney, terrified to leave. What if the naysayers were right? What if I sold my home (at a loss, yet!) and moved somewhere that was even noisier? What if I was, spiritually speaking, supposed to be learning how to accept the noise, versus running away from it?
I Resigned Myself to an “Okay” Life
Then I did an even dumber thing: I started lying to myself…right around year four, when one one half of the world’s loudest couple moved out (the base-loving girl) but the other half stayed (the power tool loving guy). He kept the kids. The dog had mysteriously disappeared by this point (perhaps eaten by the boa constrictors in their shed…forgot to mention that side business).
I told myself I had weathered the neighbour madness this long, why leave now? Maybe with Loud Girl gone, things would be better? Sure, the traffic on my street seemed to be increasing a bit. Okay, a lot. Okay, fine…it had morphed into the smalltown equivalent of a freeway.
Our little town was growing, and my street had become some sort of high-speed shortcut for every truck within a ten-mile radius. Every time a trailer hit the bump in the road – in front of my house – my nerves would jangle and jump.
Meanwhile, the power tool orchestra in the back yard next door had grown to include nail guns and power washers.
And yet, by year five, I was oddly resigned to my noisy surroundings and had slipped into settling for an okay life (sure I was a frazzled mess most of the time – but at least I lived near the ocean!), which is when the Universe decided to crank up the “it’s time to move on” nudge to a big fat push.
They sent in the rats.
The Lesson the Universe Was Trying to Teach Me I Ignored
Ever since I had moved into my sweet little bungalow by the sea, there had been rats around…as in under my sunroom and inside my shed. But when they moved INTO my actual home – the crawlspace – I laid down the law and called in the big guns a.k.a. Patrick, The Rat Guy.
Patrick and I saw an awful lot of each other over the next two years. He would pop by on a regular basis to remove the, er, remains from my crawlspace…carrying them out my front door in discreet little black body bags.
In all fairness, Patrick did his darndest to figure out WHERE the rats were getting in. Just when he thought he’d sealed off the last possible port of entry, low and behold another rat showed up in one of his traps.
He was puzzled; I was frustrated (never mind freaked). And the body-count continued to grow.
This went on for two years. Of course, it did. The lesson I was “supposed” to be learning – AGAIN – was that when the time comes to move on, you move on. You don’t stay stuck when you are not happy. This is not rocket-science. How many “nudges” does one need?
Quite a few, apparently.
Since I clearly still wasn’t getting the message that it was time to move on from the Sidney chapter, the Universe upped its ante. But this time, it really meant business. For it knew what I did not: my real dream life was waiting…but I had to get the heck OUT of Sidney first.
At Long Last, the Universe Got Through to Me
A quick bit of backstory: the biggest boundary pusher in my life is a friend I have known for more than thirty years. She has consistently pushed through every single boundary I have ever tried to set with her. If I said no to yet another long weekend visit to my place in Sidney (she lived on the mainland), she would just wait a few weeks and ask again. She was relentless, demanding, manipulative and over-the-top bossy. But I had put up with it because…well, because giving in seemed easier than standing firm.
Until, that is, May 2017 rolled around. She called (again) to check in and see how I was feeling about my home in Sidney. Was I still thinking about possibly selling, or was I going to stay put?
Because you see, she had vested interest in me staying right where I was. She and her husband had just bought a place a few blocks away…and were looking forward to living closer to me.
Perhaps you can see where this is headed?
“I’m still waffling back and forth,” I said to her over the phone that day in May. “I think I want to move but I’m not quite sure…”
“Actually,” said my friend, “I have decided for you.”
Yes, you read correctly.
“You will stay where you are,” she continued, “and we will just put up a big hedge in your front yard, so you don’t hear the traffic.”
I didn’t know what to say. I held the phone out from my ear and stared at it. Surely, I hadn’t heard correctly? She was making a major life decision FOR me?
I didn’t say anything…to her. But let me tell you, after I hung up, the living room walls sure got an earful – none of which is repeatable here.
But at long last, I had GOT the message…the time had come to move on. Three days later, I called a realtor and put the plans in motion to put my rat-ridden house up for sale.
Sometimes Opportunity Really Does Knock at the Door
A few days after that, there was a knock on the door. Yes, sometimes opportunity does – literally – knock at the door.
A realtor (not mine) was standing on my front step. His client was my neighbour…yes, the power tool loving guy who had helped ensure my dream life was a noisy nightmare. Seems he had just put his house on the market, too, and his realtor wanted to see if I was interested in selling my home to a developer – who was interested in purchasing both our properties.
Umm…YES!!!
Yup, that’s right…I joined forces with my nemesis – and we both ended up making significantly more money on our homes, than if we’d sold them individually on the open market.
I took my money and ran…literally. I put my belongings in storage and lived the gypsy life with my retriever for the next eighteen months, including going on an epic three-month road trip through the Western states. That had always been a dream of mine. The timing was perfect.
And then, a couple of years ago, I found my dream home – a few hours up island – in my dream town, within biking distance of my dream beach. My neighbours are extremely quiet. In fact, the “writer by the sea” life I am living now far exceeds the version I ever dreamed for myself. I had no idea a huge sandy beach (with warm water to swim in) even existed on Vancouver Island!
Sometimes We Need Difficult Experiences to Fully Appreciate What the Universe Delivers
I can’t turn back the clock. But if I could, I would have sold my home in Sidney the year after I bought it. But maybe, just maybe, those seven years were necessary training ground…so that I could fully appreciate and savour the life I have now, including puttering in my oh-so-quiet, beautiful garden? If I hadn’t experienced the polar opposite of serenity for so long, maybe it wouldn’t be quite as sweet as it is now?
Plus, as a writer, I get to share my experiences – and the lessons learned – with people, so that perhaps they can make a course correction far sooner than I did. In other words, if you are feeling stuck in a situation and strongly suspect it is time to move on, pay attention to that.
Fear of the unknown – the next chapter – can be a powerful force that holds us in circumstances that are no longer healthy for us. But time again, the Universe has proven to me that sometimes the difficult times are meant to show us the way forward to wherever it is we need to go next…to be happy again. It is our choice as to how long we stay in those difficult times.
(Read the prequel to this story on Maryanne’s other blog post, “How the Universe Woke Me Up to My Dream Life.“)
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Maryanne Pope is the author of A Widow’s Awakening.
She also writes screenplays, playscripts and blogs.
Maryanne is the CEO of Pink Gazelle Productions and a Director with the John Petropoulos Memorial Fund.
To receive her blog, “Weekly Words of Wisdom,” please subscribe here.