costa rica

There is no good way to start a blog. There is no normal way to introduce oneself. All I can think to say is that I am an extremely ordinary 37-year old woman with an extremely extraordinary life. Most important, I think, is how keenly aware I am of this. 

In just one short business week in early 2024, I was laid-off from my boring (and trapping) Corporate 9-5 and decided to move with my high school sweetheart to the Costa Rican jungle. There, we invested our hearts, money, minds and peace of mind to developing a property we named "Oropel." Then, it was nothing but a hill in the woods, off-grid. For months, we slept in an open-air garage. I wept. 

Now, in early 2025, we've completed the first phase of construction. That means I have time, wifi, and a chair to type this out. I still weep, but in air conditioning. 

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Here, I will tell you how we did it. I will lay bare all of our devastating mistakes. I'll tell you our love story, explain rural Costa Rica, and my now-husband's job (which involves a lot of snake-handling). I'll also focus disproportionately on our ongoing animal rescue efforts in our local community. As of writing this, we have four dogs. 

I hope for this to be inspiring, because if I escaped Corporate America -- then, you can do too. That's the secret they don't want you to know. But this is also a cautionary tale, because nothing worth doing is easy.

 

Here's how it happened.