WHAT POLITICS TAUGHT ME: YOU CAN’T PLEASE EVERYONE—AND SOMETIMES YOU CAN’T PLEASE ANYONE

Submitted by Ginger Kuenzel, DLE ’12, Speaker, Author, Editor, Translator, Corporate Consultant, Adirondacks Enthusiast, Hague, NY/ Englewood, FL

This summer it seemed like everyone in the world was moving out of the city and to the Adirondacks. Last week’s article in The Hub about first-time female homeowners led me to reflect on my decision to move to my house in the Adirondacks several years ago and what the process of moving entailed.

For years I had been dreaming about quitting my job in the city, moving to a cabin on a remote lake in the mountains and having complete control over my own time. Farewell to rush hour traffic. Whoever dreamed up that term? There’s definitely nothing rushed about it.

Adieu to sitting in an office, day in and day out. Goodbye and good riddance to the never-ending stream of e-mails, most of them completely useless. No more performance reviews, project status meetings, process improvement teams, unreasonable bosses, uncooperative co-workers… You get the picture.

I decided that the time had finally come to stop dreaming about this and just do it. I’m a firm believer in the concept that if you can clearly picture something, then you can make it happen. And since the picture of what I wanted to do couldn’t have been clearer in my mind, I decided the time was right to go for it.

Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t retire. In fact, I get cranky when my friends refer to my new lifestyle as retirement. I’m far too young for that. Not to mention the fact that I still need the cash flow. Since company pensions are a thing of the past in America, and it’s looking more and more like our Social Security system may run dry at some point, I still need money to cover my expenses and save for the future.

The first hurdle was selling my condominium in Boston, which turned out to be trickier than I anticipated. Even with all the staging to make it look like a showcase home, the open houses to attract prospective buyers and all the online photos and marketing, it just didn’t sell.

This definitely could have thrown a wrench into my plans. But instead, I went to Plan B: Become a landlord and rent the condo for six months. I put an ad on Craigslist and promptly got an e-mail from Dan, asking if he and his partner could come see it. They loved it the minute they walked in the door. And when, as I was showing them around, Dan said, “Honey, this closet is perfect for all of our cleaning supplies,” I knew they would be the perfect tenants. After all, this is exactly the kind of statement you want to hear—as opposed to, for example, “Honey, this room is perfect for practicing my drums.”

Now the only thing left to do was to pack. When I started out, my boxes were very organized and clearly labeled: glassware, dishes, pots and pans, shoes, etc. When I got to the books, however, I realized I would need to combine them with something light—like scarves—or I’d never be able to lift the boxes. How should I label them though? How about: “Miscellaneous.”

Over the next couple of days, the packing got more and more haphazard. Suddenly I noticed that about 80 percent of my boxes were labeled “Miscellaneous.” On day five, I awoke to the phone ringing. Now, where did I put it? Could it have gotten into one of the boxes? You see, after packing all day, I had decided the evening before that I needed a glass of wine – okay, maybe two. So, the phone could be almost anywhere!

Note to self: When you get to the point during packing that you need a glass of wine (or two), stop packing! Nothing good ever happens after that.

Amazingly, everything managed to make its way into a box, onto the moving truck I had rented and into the cabin. Once there, the boxes were stacked in every available corner, waiting to be unpacked. But if I hadn’t needed the things in the boxes for the past month, I asked myself, do I really need to unpack them? The only solution I could come up with was to have a glass of wine and think about it later.