Closing a beautiful chapter in our lives and moving on to the next adventure.
I had a moment this morning.
It dawned on me that we’re not coming back when we leave here, and the emotional weight of that hit me like a lead brick.
This has been our home for over 8 years, and we have built a helluva life here. But I’ve learned that humans grow, change, and evolve. We live through phases in life. This was a great phase, but it’s time to move on.
To balance those emotions, I try to remember that this isn’t a loss but an exciting adventure leading us to the next place we need to be. Although we’re leaving much of our trip to spontaneous adventure, believe it or not, there’s a method to our madness.
But what helps the most is remembering the things that made us put our house on the market in the first place.
The Skinwalker – Beginning of the End
I always said inviting strangers into your home is a numbers game. Eventually, you’ll end up with a rotten egg. We started hosting Airbnb guests in 2017 and were incredibly blessed with a “mostly” respectful guest list until June 2022.
We had some entertaining experiences with a few guests, but nothing prepared us for this guest. We’ll call him “Doug” for anonymity.
Doug was a paranoid schizophrenic off his meds (and on lots of other drugs) who showed up for his stay at 11 o’clock at night, ranting about killing demons in the desert in Utah. He was the second person we hosted who made me feel compelled to lock our bedroom door at night. But he made the first questionable guest look like a kitten.
The following day, I watched him medicate with a sublingual suboxone strip, and within 45 minutes, I watched him transform from a somewhat stable human being into a walking coconut. He spent an hour doing laps around my pool table, chanting “God-Country-Family” and mumbling about demons and his father while wearing a straw cowboy hat painted with an American flag.
While I won’t go into the entire, horrific story of his two-day stay, I’ll fast-forward to when we started receiving his mail a few weeks later. He left our house, went to a bank, and opened an account using our address. He attempted to establish residency in our home.
This 42-year-old man wreaked havoc on our lives and robbed us of our trust. His presence changed the air in our home.
I once told the entire story to young, Native American man who was visiting our house, and he looked at me wide-eyed, and said, “You hosted a skinwalker in your home.”
I believe him.
Friends and Frequent Abusers
Let me tell you what happens when you own a disc golf course – everybody in the disc golf scene wants to be your friend. They want unrestricted access to the course and any amenities you offer. And, preferably for free.
Once these people get comfortable, they take liberties they wouldn’t take with anyone else’s business.
One “friend” saw our success with our property and decided to be predatory to cash in on our efforts. He built a course, put it on UDisc, and took advantage of simply being near our highly ranked course. So, when one of our guests arrived to play his course before checking in at our place, he convinced them not to stay with us and to stay on his property instead.
We also hosted another group on numerous occasions – I cooked food and hosted this group like they were my own kids. Their drug-fueled stays frequently involved a variety of hallucinogens, drugs, booze and glow discs, but we never had any incidents – I let them do their thing. But by 2023, they had become so comfortable that they hosted a party with 78 people, in my home, and stiffed us on an agreed fee for the event. Truthfully, I don’t think they ever intended to compensate us for our hospitality.
That same weekend, a repeat Airbnb guest arbitrarily invited a 15-year-old child to our 21+ property without asking for permission. And said ‘child’ left the only negative review our course had ever received, saying he felt like he “almost died” on our course. Thus, this arrogant, entitled little brat tanked our 4.9 rating that we had worked tirelessly for 7 years to build.
I was just done. We immediately closed the course to “by appointment only.” We had lost our tolerance for disrespect.
The Reality of Aging
Let’s get a few hard truths out of the way, shall we? Aging is a sad fact of life. Death is inevitable. Time is limited.
Burying our parents is an unfortunate rite of passage that happens in life that helps us learn to appreciate time more. Just as there are lessons in life… there are lessons in death.
- Healthcare matters – and I’m not talking about making monthly appointments with your doctor to fill your prescriptions. I’m talking about taking accountability for the bad habits contributing to your demise and doing something about it.
- Stagnancy leads to complacency. As people age, they tend to stay home more, exercise less, and stop living. They live life through a silver smoke screen of Fox News and QVC from an armchair in the living room.
- Collecting “stuff” you think might valuable someday is a cruel way to task your children with selling all your junk once you’re gone. Unless you’re investing in gold, rare paintings, or real estate, nothing is as valuable as you think it is.
- Don’t leave anything for your kids to divide—especially property. This only creates tension and resentment, particularly if you have a blended family from previous marriages.
- Do it now.
Now that we’re over 50, there are important things to think about. After losing Gary’s father in 2023, we realized it wouldn’t be fair to expect our kids in Iowa to handle selling a house and all our belongings in Colorado if something happened to us.
We understood the legal battles that would ensue. Even with a will, things can go awry. It’s irresponsible for us to leave such a mess for our kids. So we’re cashing out.
Wrapping It Up
The years we’ve spent here on the ranch were precisely what we needed nine years ago. However, we are not who we were then; we’ve grown, changed, and evolved.
This home no longer serves us or our future. I don’t want to grow stagnant, give myself excuses to stop living, and surround myself with useless trinkets until the day I die, expecting someone else to clean up my mess.
Yes, closing the door on a chapter as beautiful as this one stings a little. It’s not easy to walk away from something you’ve invested your soul into, but learning to let go and trust the process is just another one of those lessons in life.
