If you didn’t notice, eWillys was down on Sunday. It wasn’t just my server, but seems to have been the entire server farm (or the connection to the server farm). Even the web host’s site was down. Things seem to be working fine now.

With eWillys not working, you’d think I had some extra time to take it easy. No sites, no updates, no problems …. Instead, it just gave me extra time to pace and fret over the VA’s delay of the paperwork we need to close on the house. We were expecting to close on April 2nd, so every day of delay drags on us.

I suppose this house is more than just a house; it’s a transitional period, a bookend to the Finding Virginia story that ended in mid-2011, just before I met Ann. I had just started eWillys a few years earlier as the Recession crushed the companies I’d helped launched in the 00s. By 2011, the Recession had also wiped out half the value of the house I’d bought with my girlfriend in Idaho, meaning it was greatly underwater. The house got sold, I lost money, we split up, and I moved temporarily back in with my parents. So much fun!

Then, I met Ann.

We hit it off immediately. I soon moved in with her and her mom, as Ann was already caring for her mother at that point. Not having to pay for housing and having few bills, I didn’t have to work and, instead, was able to focus on eWillys, research, writing books, traveling, and helping out with my father. It was a unique opportunity to step away from the ordinary work-a-day world and, after all the my stress in the early 2000s of raising money for startups in Silicon Valley, it was a big mental relief (something I didn’t explore all that deeply in Finding Virginia).

And, if that wasn’t all, my mother and sister may be moving to Texas this fall, meaning they will be selling their houses. Having the extra space at our new place to put some of the family ‘treasures’ (like a coal cart from my grandfather’s Idaho mine) just adds to the pressure of needing this place.

I’m sure it will all work out this week, but that thought doesn’t making the waiting any easier, especially with Ann’s mother’s health so fragile.

So, it’s not that we are at the worst parts of our life; instead, we’ve climbed up from the worst parts, together, and can see the best parts before us; the house represents a huge step in that direction and we are ready to proceed. This is why the waiting is intolerable, because we are very, very ready to move forward!!