Tag / moving

Closet with hanging shirts, shoe rack, storage bins, and step stool in a bedroom
by Kelly Mattei

New Apartment? You Might Need These

New apartment? You might need these…

My daughter is moving into a new apartment. She had an apartment in college, but this is her first apartment post-college, and she’ll be in New York, where space is limited. She is excited, and so am I, but there are some things we decided she would need that she didn’t need at a college apartment.

  • Countertop nugget ice maker. The refrigerator in her new apartment doesn’t have an ice maker, and ice trays take too long to actually make ice. Therefore, we got her a countertop nugget ice maker. It makes ice in 5-7 minutes, and it’s pretty compact, so it doesn’t take up a lot of counter space. It would be great in any apartment or at the bar in any home, if you don’t have a built-in ice maker. Or maybe you just like nugget ice in your beverages? Purchase here.
  • Windowless Portable Air Cooler. Running an air conditioner can be expensive. I know that for sure, because our power bill quadruples in July and August in North Carolina. Even New York summers are hot, so I got a windowless portable air cooler for her room. She is accustomed to sleeping in our cold house at night, so she can run the air cooler at night to keep the power bill from escalating. The one we got doesn’t require a window tube, hence the word “windowless,” and it’s supposed to drop the temperature anywhere from 5 degrees to 16 degrees in a small room. We got here from Amazon here.
  • Shoe racks. A friend gave us her daughter’s stackable wood shoe racks to put in the bottom of a closet. Before, when our daughter was in college, she had an over-the-door shoe hanger but didn’t use it like she should have. Because she likes to keep the shoes in the bottom of her closet, I’m hoping this will work better. Purchase some similar to the ones we have here.
  • Towel/linens storage. In her college apartment, she had plenty of room and had her own bathroom. Towels could be stored there, and linens could be stored in her huge walk-in closet. Fast forward to her NY apartment, and she is sharing a bathroom with a roommate and has a much smaller closet. Therefore, she needs a place to store those items. We opted for a wicker hamper that will fit inside one end of her closet. She will actually have two hampers: one for dirty laundry and another for the towels/linens…one at each end of the closet. We found a great deal on Amazon here.
  • Tension closet rod. Because she has only one closet, and it it only has one long bar in it, we decided to purchase a tension closet rod, so she will be able to hang more clothes, even if it’s just a lower rod for hanging pants. That will free up some space on the other rod. We found a great one on Amazon. You can see it and purchase here.
  • Thermal Insulated Blackout Curtains. These are great for so many reasons. First, the obvious: they block sunlight when you don’t want it. But also, they block some noise and provide some level of insulation, trapping air between the curtain and the window to help maintain desired temperature in the room. We are big fans of blackout curtains, and my daughter loved the ones she had in her college apartment. Unfortunately, they are too long for her new apartment, so we ordered new ones. We need to just cover the window, because the air conditioning unit is below the window, and we definitely don’t want to cover that! We purchased these.
  • Clothes Drying rack. Some clothes just don’t need to go in the dryer: workout clothes, cottons, etc. And some clothes can be handwashed in the sink and hung to dry…like underwear, swimsuits, and lightweight blouses. Therefore, we got our girl a drying rack. There are different kinds. Some people prefer the tripod version while others prefer the standard ones. Get a tripod drying rack from Amazon here. Or get a standard, folding drying rack here.
  • Folding step stool. Because our daughter is only about 5’5″, we knew she would need a step stool to reach the upper shelf in her closet. Therefore, we got her a folding step stool. It will come in handy when she needs to stack sweaters or whatever she wants to put up there. Purchase here.

We will be moving her into the apartment in two days. I’m sure, as we go, I will come up with more items we need, and I will share with you!

***As an Amazon affiliate, I receive commission on items purchased through my links.***

NYC doorman welcoming female tenants at entrance
by Kelly Mattei

Preparing for the Post-College Move/Job

Preparing for the post-college move/job.

The movers arrive in ten days. They will scoop up a bed, mattress, dresser, night stands, vanity/desk, chair for said vanity/desk, some wardrobe boxes, and some boxes full of our daughter’s personal effects and drive them to New York. “Personal effects” sounds like a prison term, but whatever. There’s not a whole lot to move, fortunately, because her roommate has her own stuff and some living room stuff too. I’m guessing I will buy whatever living room and kitchen stuff they still need after they get there. Or maybe I should say “after I get there.” There is a very real possibility that I will have to be there to accept my daughter’s belongings when they arrive in New York, because she might still be enjoying a long weekend at Lollapalooza in Chicago.

A mother’s work is never done.

The movers pick up in ten days, and once they pick up, they will call me to let me know when they will be arriving at her apartment in New York. Chances are, I will have less than 24 hours to get there to meet them, so I will keep a bag packed (much like when we were awaiting her arrival into the world) so I can hop on a plane immediately and get there. And I will wait for them. However, I’m not sleeping in the apartment, because I like to sleep in a meat locker, and they just won’t have that apartment cold enough for me. I will stay in a hotel, thank you very much. If my daughter isn’t there yet, I will supervise the delivery of the furniture and boxes without her. We have drawn up plans for how/where she wants her bedroom furniture placed. If she is there, I will be there for moral support and to take her shopping for whatever she needs. Not gonna lie…moving to New York isn’t cheap. Heck, moving anywhere is expensive, but moving to New York is especially expensive.

Add in all the time required to move there. First, we had to find an apartment. That can take a while, but we were very fortunate in that regard, as she has a lovely roommate who had boots on the ground, and we (she) found an apartment pretty darn quickly. We paid the deposit, filled out the application, went through the application process (not fun), and secured the apartment in a good part of town. Don’t get me wrong…there was a lot of worry involved for me. I had visions of never finding an apartment, but our “boots on the ground” came through! It’s actually a pretty roomy apartment by New York standards, and I am so excited for them to live there. They will even have a skyline view, a rooftop garden, a 24-hour doorman, a gym, and their very own balcony. Win! We haven’t actually seen the apartment yet, but the “boots on the ground” did send us a video, and we were happy with it. Additionally, I have spent time communicating with the movers, and I have had to communicate with them repeatedly. If you ever plan to move to New York or plan to move one of your kids to New York, you should know in advance that the movers will need to send a Certificate of Insurance to move you in. Otherwise…no dice. The building will not let them in without it. It’s not difficult to get from most movers, but it’s something you have to do. Since our daughter is working at an internship in Charlotte this summer, I have tried to help her with some other things too…like getting the electricity at the apartment put in her name. The roommate secured the wifi service.

I find myself feeling sort of how I felt when we were getting ready to send her off to college for freshman year. The foyer is filling up with boxes just like it did then. The garage is holding the furniture we ordered. There are boxes everywhere as I wait for her to pack them with her “personal effects.” Fortunately, she banks with a large international bank, so she won’t have to open a new account after she moves. She will need to find a new doctor and dentist after she settles in, but she has seen both locally in the past month, so she should be good to go until she finds someone.

And honestly, we won’t know what we are missing in the apartment until we know what we are missing. At that point, we can run to TJ Maxx, Target, Home Goods, or somewhere else in the city and get what she needs…toiletries, paper goods, etc. I’m not paying movers to haul toilet paper or cleaning supplies from North Carolina to New York.

In 1989, when my parents moved me to Atlanta from Alabama after graduating from college, I had already secured the apartment on my own and had all the utilities put in my name. In fact, I was already living in the apartment when they drove over with a sofa, a TV, and a few other small items. I purchased a bed plus boxspring and mattress, so that’s basically what I had in the apartment. That’s all I had for a little while. I didn’t care. I was living in my own version of the “big city of dreams” and loving life.

I hope our daughter will love life in The Big Apple. I hope she will settle in as quickly as I settled into life in Atlanta way back when. I pray she will stay safe and keep her head on a swivel.

As soon as I get her settled in, my husband and I plan to take a vacation we postponed because of this move. I remember that I went on vacation as soon as we got her settled into college freshman year too. I have a feeling I will appreciate the relaxation more than ever. Hopefully, she will stay settled in a for a while. Every move just ages me a little more. Like I said, a mother’s work is never done.

by Kelly Mattei

DEAL on Rubbermaid Commercial-Grade Laundry Cart

Y’all know I encourage folks to purchase this on a regular basis. It’s a great cart for moving college students into and out of dorms. It’s great for moving towels to and from the pool deck. It’s great for moving laundry or other items around your house without having to carry them. Highly recommend, and it’s on sale ($127.93 instead of $200) until November 28, while supplies last! Get it here.

by Kelly Mattei

Finishing Freshman Year of College

Finishing freshman year of college.

My daughter attended an independent school in Charlotte from Transitional Kindergarten through 12th grade, and the former head of the school often had wise words to share. One of his favorite phrases? “Finish well.” As the end of each school year approached, I would remind our daughter, “Finish well!” Did she always hear me? She always finished pretty well, so maybe.

Now, the end of her freshman year of college is rapidly approaching. Like a train out of control, freshman year is moving forward at lightning speed. She will be home in less than a week. Less than a week! I find myself saying, “Finish well!”

We moved her into her dorm at the beginning of August. It was an exciting time. It was a scary time. Like lots of moms out there, I was excited for her to experience college, but I was nervous about leaving her 450 miles away. However, I remembered something I had read before:

Put the basket in the water.

I got that sentence from a piece written by Ashlei Woods. You can read it here. “Put the basket in the water” is a reference to the time of Moses, when midwives were ordered by Pharaoh to kill baby boys born to Israelites by drowning them in the Nile. Moses’s mother, in an effort to save her baby, placed him in a basket and placed the basket in the river, in hopes that he would live. I’m no Biblical scholar, but even I remember the story from Sunday School lessons. Moses did live, obviously, and went on to become a great prophet. I certainly don’t expect my daughter to become a great prophet, but I want her to live and become the best person she can be. I want her to live life. And by placing her proverbial basket in that proverbial river (college), I sent her on her way.

Has she learned things in college that will help her in her future endeavors? In short, yes. She has learned something in each class she has taken. She has learned about music, public relations, writing…so much. More importantly, she has learned more about who she is. She has learned how to make friends from lots of different places. She has learned how to handle medical emergencies and automobile situations. She has learned how to make doctor appointments and pick up her own prescriptions. And even though I always tried to expose her to as many new experiences as possible, she has been exposed to even more new experiences. She has learned to manage on her own. Sure, she still gets advice (sometimes wanted, sometimes not) from me, but she is doing it! We still support her financially, but she is doing it! We put the basket in the water, and we trusted God and trusted her.

Have there been hiccups along the way? Yes, but she has learned from each one. Last week, SpaceX launched a test rocket…the most powerful one ever launched. There was excitement surrounding it, but it failed. And afterward, Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, seemed happy in spite of the failure, saying they (the engineers, the company) would learn a lot from the failure. He was excited about what they would learn! Those words stuck with me, because this very successful man was reminding the world that we learn from failure. Don’t get me wrong. Our daughter’s hiccups, so far, haven’t been in the classroom. But any hiccups she has experienced along the way have been opportunities for learning. Learning what doesn’t work is how she will learn what does work.

In a few days, we will move our daughter out of her freshman dorm. As she finishes her freshman year, I will remind her several times, “Finish well.” I am already reminding her to start packing things up and cleaning out her room. And after we get her home for the summer, I feel sure we will notice she is a different girl than the one we sent to college in August. She is older. She is more confident. She is more independent. She is more knowledgable. As my own parents said when I came home after my freshman year, “We sent our daughter off to college and got a different person back.” They often joked that I was “switched at college.”

We are excited to have our girl home soon.

by Kelly Mattei

Preparing for Launch to College

Preparing for launch to college.

Boxes are piling up in the foyer of our house…Amazon, Nordstrom, Bed Bath & Beyond, Neiman Marcus, Target, Walmart, Zappos, more Amazon…you name it, we have it. Seriously, the foyer is starting to look like a warehouse. And it’s all because we are preparing to send our only daughter off to college to start her freshman year.

She moves in the first week of August. Are we ready? Well, we don’t have everything she is going to need. But I guess we are as emotionally ready as we will ever be. Who knows? We likely won’t know until we drive away from her dorm. I’m sure there will be tears at some point. Will we cry in the dorm room? Will we cry over dinner after we get everything moved in? Will we cry in the car after we leave? Or will it be a delayed reaction? Maybe we will cry after we get home and see her empty room? I have no way of knowing, but I will gladly answer all those questions after the fact.

Freshman move-in day is a day she will remember for the rest of her life. She already knows her roommate, but she will make lots of new friends on the very first day of dorm life…just like I did back in 1985. I have written before about my first college friends. You can see that here.

My friend, Angela, whose daughter is a junior in college (fortunately, at the same college where our daughter is going), tells me she didn’t cry when she left her in the dorm the first time. However, she did cry after she got home, and she occasionally still cries.

This whole “preparing for launch” thing is real. It’s a lot these days. When I went to college as a freshman in 1985, I feel like I took the bare minimum…linens, towels, enough clothes to last me a couple of weeks, some shoes, toiletries, an alarm clock, photos and posters to hang on the bulletin board in the room…and that’s about it. I wasn’t abnormal for the time, I don’t think. But wow, times have changed.

Now, you can look online and find all kinds of dorm decorating ideas. Girls decorate their dorm rooms with lots of stuff: pillows, rugs, lamps, curtains, extra shelving, headboards…all kinds of stuff. Fortunately, my daughter’s roommate’s mom is an interior designer. Yay, me! When I first talked with her on the phone, she told me, “I can do this in my sleep.” Thank you, Lord! It wouldn’t be left up to me! No one wants me to decorate a room. I think there are two types of people: the ones who see surroundings, and the ones who see faces. I am the latter. You could ask me right now what color the walls are in different rooms of my house, and I wouldn’t be able to tell you. In fact, I am working in our guest room right now, and even though I have been in that bathroom numerous times over the last few days, I couldn’t tell you what the cabinetry in there looks like. Is it white? Is it black? I’m not sure.

But back to the dorm…

The roommate’s mom and I agree that the girls’ room should not be so stuffed with extra things that it feels claustrophobic. It’s a small dorm room for two girls…two XL twin beds, a desk, two wardrobes, a refrigerator/microwave combo, a vanity area, and a bathroom with a shower. Obviously, we need to outfit it with the basics. They’ll need a shower curtain, a bath mat/rug, linens/bedding, towels, hangers, clothes, and their personal belongings. We have added some bed pillows, headboards, two throws for the beds, a rug for the bedroom, curtains, a couple of lamps, a few wall hangings, laundry bags, under-the-bed shoe storage compartments, a stand-up steamer, a vacuum (for the rug), Clorox toilet wand, and a table to put between the beds for the lamps. We aren’t taking extra shelving. We just want them to be comfortable, and I think they will be.

But for now, I am feeling a little overwhelmed by the boxes in the foyer. I just walked into our daughter’s room and told her we need to go through the boxes to see what is “keep” and what is “return.” She just looked at me. I’m sure she feels overwhelmed by the boxes too. Looking at the ever-growing stack of boxes, it seems like a daunting task to open them and make decisions right now.

Last year, I purchased lots of big, blue IKEA moving/storage bags well in advance of this endeavor. A friend told me to purchase them early, because by the time I realized I needed them, they would be out of stock. So they’ve been in a closet just waiting to be used. And tonight, we will carry some of them downstairs to start sorting through the boxes. We will start packing the “keep” items in the moving bags, and we will start putting the returns in my car for me to transport to the store, UPS, or FedEx…wherever they need to go.

I need to get out my checklist and start checking things off. There are checklists all over the internet. I found a helpful one on the Colleges of Distinction website. You can see it here. Some of the items we definitely won’t need, so we will redline those items, but then we will finish collecting all the other items we need and getting them packed. We also have to remember we must be able to fit it all in the car when we go! Sure, we could ship things ahead to the university post office, but honestly, that just sounds like a bigger pain to me, because I’m sure parking would be difficult, and there will be lines to stand in. No thanks. We will simply have to figure this out with the space we have.

Am I dreading the process? In a word…yes. But I’m not dreading it because we will be leaving our daughter behind. I’m dreading it, because we actually have to get all the stuff there and into the room. Even though we are trying to take a somewhat minimalist approach, we will have lots of “stuff.” Once the stuff is in the room and put away, I’m sure I will dread the actual departure without our girl.

Preparing for launch to college is no joke.

by Kelly Mattei

And They Said It Wouldn’t Last

On August 19, my husband and I will celebrate our 19th wedding anniversary. We were married in 2000, when we were both rapidly approaching our mid-thirties. We had known each other for three years, having met through a mutual friend with whom I worked.

I was 33, and he was 34, and when we got married, I was living in Mobile, Alabama, and he was living in Charlotte, North Carolina. We had met in Mobile in 1997, but he had moved to Charlotte soon thereafter, so we had a long-distance relationship, and I had no plans of moving unless I was married. I’m sure I could have found a job in Charlotte, but at 33, I wasn’t willing to make a partial commitment to a man; I needed a full-on commitment if I were going to move.

So we were married on August 19 in the historic First Presbyterian Church in Wetumpka, Alabama. When we returned from our two-week Hawaiian honeymoon, we went to Mobile and loaded a truck with all my belongings and moved them to Charlotte. I had lived in different places, so moving was not a challenge for me. In fact, the longest I had ever lived anywhere at that point in my life was nine years…moving wasn’t a problem. Of course, my family was in Alabama, but I could visit whenever I wanted, and we talked every day.

Not gonna lie. The first year was challenging. Remember, we were 33 and 34. We had both been living alone for years, and I loved living alone….eating cereal for dinner in front of the TV; staying up as late as I wanted; being in charge of the remote control; not answering to anyone…you get the picture. We were two (and still are) two very different people. He likes to be home. I like to be on the go. In fact, home, for me, is just a place to change clothes. And I’m always planning my next trip. He’s quiet. I’m not. Seriously, he is very quiet and reserved. But we were married. Suddenly, I had to be more grown up. I had to cook and eat real meals at the table instead of sitting cross-legged on the floor. My husband liked to go to bed earlier than I did, and he always held the remote control. Life was different, and when I was down, he didn’t understand. What did I not like about leaving a one-bedroom apartment? Well…that little one bedroom apartment was my space, and after getting married, it seemed I rarely had my space. I’m sure there were people who could sense the tension and thought, “They’ll never make it.”

But one year in, I was accustomed to married life. In fact, one year in, and I was flat out enjoying it. We got a dog…an Airedale Terrier I wanted to name Fannie after a college friend, but the husband wouldn’t go for “Fannie.” We opted for Annie instead. She has been gone for several years now, but I still wish we had named her Fannie.  And then, 2.5 years after we married, we were expecting a baby. We found out in May 2003 it was a girl, and we were thrilled. She was born in October of 2003, and no one ever loved a baby more than we love that girl. But again, there was added stress. We were sleep deprived. We were exhausted (mostly me). But after the first few months, we started to get more sleep. We started to have more fun, and the stress of having a baby in the house subsided. We were a happy little family of three.

It hasn’t been all fun and games. In 2005, my husband’s beloved grandmother passed away, and all of us were heartbroken. She was kind and caring, and she was a force of nature. At the same time, my mother was driving from Mobile to Birmingham (4-5 hours) all the time, trying to get my grandmother settled in to assisted living, and my daddy was having undiagnosed health issues. In February 2006, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and he died that same year…eight months after his official diagnosis. My heart was broken. While I had lost grandparents, I had never experienced a loss as terrible as that one. It was the hardest time of my life, at that point. I was truly devastated. My heart ached in a way I didn’t know it could.

After that, my husband had not one, but two brain surgeries, and we survived that. I say “we,” because it was hard on both of us. Physically and mentally, it was difficult for him. It was emotionally and mentally hard on me. He came back from surgery a different person, but we got through that too. You can read about it here. And then, I lost my mother in December 2017. It took the wind out of my sails. I slept for a month afterward. I had learned some coping skills after the losing my daddy, but it didn’t matter. Nothing could have prepared me for the loss of my mother. I can still get upset at any moment, and it has been 20 months since she passed.

But my husband helped. He understood. He knew that when I stayed in bed in January of 2018, I needed to be there. He looked out for me. He supported me. And then, one of my dearest friends died in June 2018 after battling cancer for 30 years. My husband supported me through that too.

We’ve had our share of heartaches, but we are a team, and we deal with them together. We have had our share of disagreements, but we’ve moved past them. Sometimes he thinks I’m absolutely insane, and vice versa. I’m not going to lie and say it has been easy. It hasn’t always been easy. I don’t always understand him, and he doesn’t always understand me, but we try.

But married life hasn’t been all about loss. It hasn’t been all been difficult. We love raising our daughter together. We love sitting out on the patio together in the evening…sipping Prosecco and listening to jazz music. We have enjoyed going to lots of concerts together. At night, before we go to sleep, we watch an episode of Chrisley Knows Best, The Young and The Restless, or CSI: Miami. He helps me plant the garden every year, and I tend it. We both love to watch college and NFL football, so fall is a busy time for us. And we try to go to all our daughter’s field hockey and lacrosse games. He brings me coffee in bed every morning, because he learned that I’m a lot happier if I wake up with caffeine. I go to bed earlier, because he likes to get to bed earlier than I do. We laugh a lot…at each other and with each other. We have fun together. We are thankful we wake up every day. We appreciate the life we have together.

Our daughter is about to start her sophomore year of high school, and in three short years, she will be heading off to college somewhere. We will enter a new phase of life, God willing. And we will have to adapt to more changes. Right now, we aren’t always on the same page for our plans for the empty nest years. But I’m sure we will find ways to compromise. We will find ways to make sure we both get to “live the dream.” He wants the Gulf Coast, and I want to travel to different cities. We will find a way to make it all happen, and we will have fun along the way….God willing.

Happy 19th Anniversary, Cary! And they said it wouldn’t last…

by Kelly Mattei

What Is Home?

The world is continuously changing, and people are more mobile than ever before. People move halfway around the world, all over the country, and within states. But with all that moving, what is home?

When I was growing up, my family moved several times…from Florida to Alabama and then a few times within the state of Alabama. Every time we moved, our parents sat us down and said, “THIS is home now. MAKE it home.” And we did. Wherever we were, it became home. We didn’t refer to our old city as “home.” Our parents made efforts to help us join the community, and we hit the ground running.

Charlotte is a growing city, so naturally, there are lots of people always moving into the city. They come from all over the world, and most people I talk to love it. We were on an American Airlines flight the other day, and the pilot came on before we left Miami to go to Charlotte and said, “We are about to go to Charlotte. If you don’t want to go to Charlotte, you’ve probably never been there.” And I immediately thought, “He’s right!” Charlotte is a lovely city.

But if you move to Charlotte or any other city/town, it’s never going to feel like home till you start acting like it’s home. It’s a lesson I learned as a little girl, but lots of adults haven’t learned it. The first way to make it feel like home is to start CALLING it home. I can always tell when newcomers are going to be slow to get acclimated, because they keep referring to their old city as “home.” To me, that might be “where I’m from” or “where I used to live,” but my new city is home. My new house is home.

I have a friend who once told me she was homesick the entire four years of college. In talking about it, she told me her family lived about an hour from her college, and she would pack up and go “home” every single weekend. When she said that, I realized that was likely the problem. She hadn’t fully committed to being a part of the community at her school. Without that commitment, she was homesick. And the continuous going “home” just reinforced it. We talked about it, and she said she probably should have gone somewhere farther away. Maybe she would have become a part of her college community if she hadn’t been able to go back to her parents’ home all the time. College should start to feel like “home,” even if it is a musty old dorm room.

School age children who move often seem to assimilate into a community much faster than adults. Because they go to school, they are grouped with new people immediately, and more often than not, they find a friend group.

At most schools, I think new parents have more difficulty than new students. The first thing I always tell new parents I meet is to become a part of the school community. It’s an easy place to make friends, but you must put in some effort. If you’re an introvert, you may have to step out of your comfort zone for a little while to get started. All you need is one familiar face to start feeling comfortable. Find a face. You can do that by attending parent events and sporting events. But if the opportunities are there: volunteer, volunteer, volunteer! If you are giving your time to the community, it becomes your community.

I’ve known friends who moved as empty nesters, and the ones who started volunteering or attending events were the ones who started feeling like their new home was “home” soonest.

However, if you’ve moved to a new city and are still calling your old city “home,” well, you likely aren’t fully committed, and in my experience, you could have a long row to hoe.

I’ve always felt our parents did us a big favor whenever we moved by reminding us that we had a new “home.” My own daughter has always lived in Charlotte. She will be going off to college in four years, and I hope I will be able to instill that in her. I hope she will understand that her college is her home. Frankly, I hope she will be at least a few hours away so she has to become a part of things on campus, wherever that might be. On most campuses, Parents Weekend is usually about six weeks into the year, and that is done by design, so the students will make the effort to assimilate before seeing their families again.

Then there’s the old saying, “Home is where the heart is.” I don’t know who came up with that, but for me, “Home is where I decide it will be.” Bloom where you’re planted.