Good decisions

When I moved to DC, I thought I'd stay there forever. It was the perfect city for me. (I enumerated all the reasons why I loved it here--in one of the very first posts I ever wrote on this blog.) Everything was right about it for me at the time: I had a network of friends and family (most notably my sister) there; I had a great nonprofit job and, after awhile, the opportunity to move into an even better one (where I still am); it had great public transportation and lots to do; it was lovely and vibrant and just right for someone single and just out of college, and then for a new couple. Moving there was absolutely the right decision. (Plus, you know, I met Torsten while we were both living there, so that was a bonus.)

Moving away from DC was also absolutely the right decision. Denver is perfect for us, long-term. I know I've written about it before; the only thing it lacks is family close by, but our families are good about traveling, and in certain instances (ahem in-laws ahem), it can be nice to have that bit of distance. And everything else about this city is glorious: the size, the weather, the mountains, the atmosphere, the people.

I picked the college I wanted to attend when I was 11 year old. My sister was looking into college applications, and one day I sat down with her giant book of the top 300, or whatever it was, colleges in the country, and read through them and picked the one I wanted to go to. Then when I was in high school and it was time to actually think about colleges, I decided it was dumb to go to a school that I had picked when I was 11. So I picked out a bunch of others to look at instead. But I visited the one that I picked when I was 11, and as soon as I visited, I knew it was the school for me. And I went there. And I was right. I guess sometimes 11 is old enough to make big decisions.

I knew I wanted to marry Torsten the day I met him. He knew it too. I still made him wait nearly a year to propose. Both of those were the right decision too.

It's funny to think about how you got to where you are; some of these decisions were carefully deliberated over and thought through, but others were sort of random. Torsten and I met on Craigslist; the decision to get married was obviously more thorough, but the fact that we even know each other is completely random. In college I originally wanted to move to Chicago, but at the last minute my summer internship there fell through and my sister helped me find a place to live in DC, since she was living there at the time. Otherwise I have no idea if I would have moved there after graduation or not.

Sometimes I think that things have a way of working themselves out, and other times I see people who've endured unspeakable things and then I think that I have just been lucky so far. And not all my decisions have been good, for sure. But the big ones, they definitely have.

What about you? What are some of the best decisions you've ever made? And did you realize at the time what an impact they would have?