As I type this, I’m surrounded by cardboard boxes.

My desk is temporarily crammed here in the corner of the guest room.

The Monument Valley soundtrack is playing (as always), but this time it’s via my iMac’s not-so-great, built-in speakers.

You see, we just moved.

I feel like the above photo sums up my life pretty well right now: a bunch of stuff packed into a bin; mostly construction tools plus my Baron Fig notebook and trusty pen.

Here in my “office” (a.k.a. the guest room), I see boxes of kids toys and books we haven’t yet unpacked. There are all of our picture frames and paintings leaning against the wall. Even a couple of lamps sitting on the floor.

To my right: more boxes! Pretty much my entire office is in those boxes. Cables, podcasting gear, even the books I’m currently reading (or at least was reading before we packed them up two weeks ago).

And all this is after I spent the past 3 days ruthlessly unpacking what was in this room. It’s a miracle we’ve slimmed it down to just the 10 boxes here right now. (Whatever you do, don’t look in the garage.)

* * *

It was a little less than 12 weeks ago that my wife, Anna, and I first had a conversation about moving. Now, three months later, we’ve sold our old house, bought a new one, and are moved in (ish).

It was a sprint. But we also had incredible fortune along every step of the way…

The first day we went out looking for houses with our realtor, we found the home we wanted. A few days later we put in our offer, and, despite it being a seller’s market here in Kansas City we were able to buy our new home for less than market value.

To sell our old home, the only fixing up we had to do was refinish the hardwood floors. When we listed it, we got 3 offers the first day and sold it for asking price in less than 24 hours after putting it on the market.

Despite everything going so smoothly, the process itself of moving has still been incredibly time consuming.

I completely underestimated how much time it would take to move.

I also underestimated how many boxes we’d need, how much would be left over to pack up or throw away after we got the obvious stuff taken care of, and how much time it would take to unpack.

Friends warned me about all of that. And I thought I had a pretty good grasp on the scope of work. But I was wrong.

And, the way things landed, we closed on our new on April 4th. The very same day as the 5-year anniversary of when I began writing at shawnblanc.net full-time.

I had a series of articles I had written out for that week to share what I’d learned after 5 years of being an indie writer and running a small business.

But the events surrounding our closing completely took over my time.

Our scheduled closing on the new house was delayed by 72 hours.

And the delay in closing had a whole slew of challenges that came with it, and it ate up all the margin I had in my work schedule.

I had to choose to take some unexpected time off of work in order to focus on moving and being as present as I could with my family during the transition.

Though I had planned ahead for my writing schedule, I clearly didn’t plan ahead enough. I ended up not writing for 10 days in a row. Which is why it’s been silent here for so long.

My apologies for the extended period of silence.

This morning is the first time I’ve been able to sit down and write in almost two weeks time. It feels great to be writing again.

Now that we’re past the craziness and things are slowly returning to normal, so too will my writing and podcasting schedule.

This week I’ll be picking back up where I left of with my series about creativity and entrepreneurship. You can catch the first three articles here, here, and here. And the timing is actually pretty great — on Wednesday I’ll be sharing about work-life balance and always keeping family first. Something I literally just walked through.

* * *

Also, on the nerdy side, I’ll soon be posting an update to my Sweet Mac Setup. Right now we’re still in the middle of building out my office space here at the new house. Though it won’t quite be my dream workspace, it will certainly the best so far.