The Effort to Course Correct is Worth It

A lot of times it feels like it’s impossible to correct a problem. But that is almost never the case. You can always fix a mistake or correct a bad situation. You don’t have to live with a bad decision. It might feel like it’s more work than it’s worth, or like the relief you will get from course correcting won’t be worth it. But in my experience it always is. Nothing is ever as bad as we make it seem in our head. 

The effort required to change is often a fraction of what we think it will be. The sense of relief is 10x what we anticipate it to be. We downplay how much better it’s going to feel if we act on what we want. And we downplay the misery we’re currently feeling so that we can convince ourselves not to do the hard thing.

There’s simple stuff like when you’re lying on the couch watching TV and would like another pillow to prop you up, or a blanket to take the edge off. But you don’t want to move. It feels like too much effort to get up and walk into the other room. So instead you lay there not as comfortable as you could be. In your mind the benefit of being more comfortable isn’t outweighed by the effort to get there.

Or you know you don’t want to eat out again. That if you cooked at home you would feel better and it would help kickstart the lifestyle change you’ve been thinking about. But cooking tonight requires going to the store, prepping food, making a mess, cleaning up that mess, and it’s already late. So instead you order out one more time. You don’t feel bad necessarily, but you don’t feel as good as you would had you made a home cooked meal. You’ve convinced yourself it’s not that bad.

Then there’s the more complicated bigger items, like figuring out where to live. Something I went through in the last 2 years.

By my second full year living in Los Angeles I knew I didn’t want to live there long term. But I also didn’t know where I wanted to live, and the idea of trying to figure it out, throwing a dart at a map, spinning a globe, fatigued me. It seemed like it would take forever, and in those moments living in Los Angles seemed like a fine option. But I was never fully comfortable there and I knew I had to go. I couldn’t bury the feeling.

So at the end of 2022 my girlfriend (now fiancé) and I put all of our stuff in storage, left LA, and embarked on a 3 month road-trip to find a place to live. We drove from Los Angeles, to Massachusetts, down to Florida, and back up again. When we didn’t find a place we liked, we moved in with her parents for the spring and summer. By the time fall came around we were toying with moving to Colorado. It checked a lot of boxes for us, and plus we had no other ideas. 

Around the same time, coincidentally or not, our friend told us about someone he knew who was looking for renters in the Denver area. We took it as a sign of fate, and jumped on it. By the end of October we were driving to Colorado with a small Uhaul in tow full of belongings from the east coast. Almost a full year after leaving LA, November 1, 2023, we were now living in Colorado.

But the home we were renting was temporary. We had 6 months to find something long term. So we spent our first few months driving all over Colorado looking at different areas and homes to potentially live in. After driving across the whole state and back, twice, we concluded that we wanted to be close to Denver. At first we tried to buy a house, but I was basically denied a mortgage because I didn’t have any non investment income. So we looked for rentals, and luckily found a place we love. 

On June 1, 2024 we officially moved in and got right to work making it feel like home. With one problem. Most of our things, furniture, books, dishes, more clothes, exercise equipment, was still in storage in LA. So at the end of May I had to fly to LA to meet movers who would empty our storage bin and drive everything to our new home.

I flew to LA, stayed with a friend, met the movers, then flew back to Colorado to pack up and move the rest of our stuff, all in time to meet the movers arriving with our stuff from California.

Packing up our apartment in LA, putting everything into storage, driving around the country searching for a place to move, living with my in-laws for 6 months, driving to Colorado, searching for a place to live there, flying back to LA to get our stuff from storage, flying back to Colorado to move the stuff we already had with us, was a lot of fucking effort and time spent over an 18-month period to land where we are now. But all of it was worth it and I’d do it all again, because I’m infinitely happier than I ever was in Los Angeles. 

There were times when I was in LA that I thought I’d just suck it up and deal with being there. But lucky for me I’m incapable of silencing my desires. I’m so happy I listened to that voice that said get out, and followed through on my decision. It was more work than I ever anticipated, but not more than was worth it to be happy. The relief I feel now about living somewhere I love is 10x what I expected. The path of resistance always leads to better outcomes.