igniting the dream – benezette beginnings

2020 was a year of change.   For many, it was COVID-driven, and I was no exception – the business I worked for was essential, so we never shut down, I was a leader, so I couldn’t lead from home.  I saw the sadness, the unknown, the holy shit, as my teams worked through the same things we all encountered during the lockdowns.

Sometime in the late summer, I read a quote that appears to have come from Inc.com that said:  You don’t quit when the going gets rough.  You quit when you know you’ve invested more than you’ll get out of it. 

And I’d been working so much overtime because my teams couldn’t, and I wasn’t getting pay increases because my teams weren’t, but I was loving weekends locked at home, spent in the backyard, on projects that were long overdue for completion and just being with my family.  I knew that I wasn’t getting my time back.  I knew the money wouldn’t fix it. And so I called Jeremy and said, I have to quit this job. 

And he said:  Do it.

So I did. 

My two weeks’ notice turned into a commitment to stay and train a replacement, turned into staying until the end of the year for a financial incentive that would mean more funding for our Benezette dream and I couldn’t turn down. 

We had one vacation cabin, The Sapling, under our belts at this point, and it would need to be managed during the busy elk rut season.  So we talked about it and Jeremy left his job first.  He picked up part time work at a distribution center that allowed him to begin construction on The Branch and keep The Sapling guest ready.  He lived in our 30 foot camper and I commuted to help on weekends or he would come home to Carlisle.  We were doing it!

We didn’t explore the area nearly as much as I think I thought we would.  But we had campfires and sat on the front porch and admired our work.  In November, we closed on The Willow, a 4 bedroom, 2 bath farmhouse, constructed in 1864 that needed basically new everything.  Flooring, light fixtures, bathroom fixtures, a fire pit, a better path to entry – the list went on and on.  And so now we had 2 major projects, my full time job, Jeremy’s part time job, and being apart to deal with.  As 2020 came to a close, suddenly our Benezette dream was well within our grasps, it would be hard, but we took a wild leap of faith toward the life we envisioned.