Why do you want to move to Hawaii?

Why do you want to move to Hawaii?

For years I operated under the impression that this was just one of those questions that didn’t really need to be answered. In fact nowadays when people ask me, I assume they are doing it tongue-in-cheek.  For example, as the Polar Vortex ripped its way across the country, someone asked me why I was moving to Hawaii...and they were serious.  There is a guy that I work with that on multiple occasions has asked “Why Hawaii?”

It got me thinking. What are people really asking me? Don’t they already know why someone would want to 1) leave the Midwest and 2) move to Hawaii? The answers is both yes and no. I started to realize that real question people were asking isn’t ‘Why do you want to move to Hawaii?’ but ‘Don’t you know [blank] about Hawaii?’ Every question is tainted by the asker’s personal experiences and goals. Every time we ask a question it’s bound to be based on our own point of view. Kind a “Duh” moment if you ask me, but hey I never claimed to be some great thinker.

So the guy at work for example, he asks from his point of view. He is nearing his retirement years and so everything he does is based on the fact that he would like to retire in the next 10 to 15 years. In his opinion the cost of living in Hawaii is a hindrance to a healthy retirement portfolio. You see his plan is to invest and save millions so that he can someday have enough money to move to some tropical paradise. In his opinion I’d be better off picking a place like Costa Rica. It’s tropical, its lush and the cost of living is significantly cheaper. I have no doubt that I could live like a king there. But I have absolutely no interest in living in Costa Rica (no offense to the Costa Rican bureau of travel). I’ll spare you all the other examples but the majority of people that ask ‘Why Hawaii?’ are really asking isn’t it too expensive to live there? Isn’t it too hot to live there? Won’t you get claustrophobic? Are you really going to abandon your friends and family? Will I ever see you again?  All good questions actually. Questions I had to ask myself before I could be sure that moving to Hawaii was the right move for me and my family.

So why do I want to move to Hawaii? Well there are a number of reasons starting with the culture. To live in a place that has been achieved this perfect blend of Asian and Polynesian cultures is kind of a dream come true. Having tried learning Japanese in the past and succeeding in learning Chinese I feel perfectly at home in a place like this. Can’t wait until I can say ridiculously long street names like it’s no big deal. As for the cost of living? In my opinion it will force us to maintain a simple life-style. Like the locals, we will focus of enjoying and appreciating the land. Knowing that soon I’ll be able to see both the mountains and the ocean everyday as I go about my normal routine brightens my day. Will I miss my family? Of course I will, I miss them now. It will just be my job to make sure I keep up with them and stay in regular contact. But people have been striking out on their own since the beginning of time. No reason to stop now.  Who knows, maybe once I’ve reached a place that truly feels like home I’ll “get” it. I’ll want to put down roots, and be content never leaving my bubble. Then it’ll be me asking ‘Why do you want to move to the mainland?’

I'm going to be working on a page that documents and reviews "Moving to Hawaii" blogs. There are several that I used to kind of help motivate me and answer questions for me. No one blog will answer all of your questions about moving to Hawaii but depending on your reasons for wanting to move, some may be better than others. I'll attempt to provide an unbiased review. If you have a suggestion I'll take a look at it. 

Brown Baggin' it

To be obsessed with something means that every aspect of your life revolves around the object of your obsession. Well it should come as no surprise that I'm obsessed with moving to Hawaii. People have told me that before, but I've been able to just brush it off as merely being very detailed in my planning. Well last night I realized that it's official. I'm obsessed. Let me walk you through my revelation.

Last night we went grocery shopping. Like actual grocery shopping. The last year or so it seemed like Hope and I were content running to the store every couple of days to buy ingredients for whatever sounded good on the way home. That is unless we were distracted by Chipotle or some other food joint. I'll go ahead and take credit for this one. "Hey no big deal right? There's money in the bank let's just grab something quick on the way home. I don't feel like cooking do you?" My favorite was, "You worked hard tonight. I'm cooking. It's just unfortunate. I had a taste for [insert favorite Pan-Asian dish here] and we have 1 of the 15 ingredients I need...."  That spur of the moment spending has characterized our shopping habits for at least the last year. As much as I love to be spontaneous, that kind of thinking will leave me and my family living in a van down by the river ocean. Not a horrible future if you ask me, but Hope and Gavin have this thing about "having a roof over our heads" and "feeling safe". We realized the need to get into the habit of planning meals ahead of time. By minimizing quick trips to the grocery store we will be able to keep the already high cost of food from being even higher. Perfect example, this past July while we were on Maui, I got a hankerin' for some grilled teriyaki chicken. Despite spending [censored by Blogger for being obscenely high] at Costco on food for our stay, there were still a few things that we needed. Naturally, I did what everyone tells you not to do. I went down the street to Foodland. I didn't realize that Hawaii had any native vultures until I saw them circling over head.  You know those stories of $8 gallons of milk and $6 boxes of cereal? They originated here.  Even with the kama'aina discount (I'm think it means you've got the look down if locals assume you are one of them, or maybe they saw my pupils dilate when I saw the total.) everything is still expensive.

In the back of my mind, I was always thinking "We can plan for dinner and maybe even breakfast. But I work hard, so if I feel like going out to lunch, I'm going out for lunch". -- Cut to me holding a package of deli meat with sad eyes realizing what I've become.... responsible. Planning ahead? Thinking for the future? Moving to Hawaii has officially invaded every aspect of my life. Responsible Ken would rather save the money he could be spending eating arm-sized burritos, buckets of seafood and the occasional buffet and put it toward the move. As it turns out this will be a significant amount of money saved. Assuming an average $10 a day over the next 20 or so weeks and I could save $1000. Not bad. Enough to make me commit to the brown bag? It'll have to be. However, I can't live off of sandwiches or soup. I need some variety. I also need it to be healthy. What's the point of living in paradise if you are swollen from all the sodium in instant ramen or banquet meals?
I'll have to get creative to keep things interesting. Any suggestions for cheap and healthy lunches? I'd love to hear them.

I find the fountain drowns out the voices in my head begging for fiscal freedom

My Five ....Err... Eight Year Plan

An event five eight years in the making

According to my old blog "Psychotic Infarction", 9/30/2011 was the date that I had set for my family and I to move to Hawaii - a five year plan. I'll wait while you double check today's date. Yeah... I'm a bit late. In fact we didn't even return to Hawaii until almost two years after that date. Now I know several of you are frantically searching for what is sure to be an embarrassing snapshot of my life back in 2006.  Let me save you the trouble. It had one post and 95 views and a total of 5 comments. Two comments from friends and 3 from anonymous strangers trying convincing me that I was an idiot for even dreaming of moving to Hawaii. I learned several things after that. 1) Life is hard (Duh?). When I set that date, my wife had recently become a stay at home mom.  It didn’t take long before I realized the true cost of that worthwhile investment. Supporting a family on one income tends to change your perspective on a lot of things. 2) Turns out you can't just declare you are going to do something, not follow through, and expect results. Crazy right? 3) There is no shortage of haters. People who literally hate your dreams and aspirations. Especially when it comes to moving to Hawaii (or leaving Nebraska as I've recently found). You have the "Good Lifers" as I like to call them. The people born and raised in Nebraska home of "The Good Life" and insist that you'll never be able to make it anywhere else. I may be exaggerating slightly. Obviously there are many benefits to raising a family in Nebraska. You also have the "Paradise Fear Mongers". A group of people so bent on keeping newcomers out of Hawaii that they literally troll forums (it was 2006 remember forums?) and blog posts looking for people expressing a desire to move to Hawaii and then beating them over the head with tales of over-priced milk , killer geckos and meth’d out Haole Hunters.  

Admittedly, I got a little discouraged. The naysayers had some very good points as it turns out. I wasn't remotely prepared for a relocation to Hawaii. Not only was it expensive, but there was (is) a severe shortage of jobs that pay a living wage.  Remember A Beautiful Mind? Well that was me, crunching numbers for days on end trying to figure out a way to make it work. One night, I had a realization. I cracked the code. I only had to move the cheapest part of the island where access to necessities is limited and the threat of volcanic activity was very real oh and work 2 full time jobs with an average of 4 hours of sleep a night. It didn’t take long for me to realize that it just wasn’t going to happen.  So that dream was put on a shelf. You know the shelf in your house where things go to die? A once-treasured gift loses its luster and is put up high to only be occasionally acknowledged with awkward side glances.  Eventually the guilt gets to you. So you push it back even further on the shelf or get rid of it. For a while my mental shelf worked. I got so busy taking care of my family that I really never had time to think about my failed dream. 9/30/2011 didn't even register on the radar. How could it? Between working two jobs, learning Chinese and keeping a toddler from consuming everyday household cleaning products I was tapped out.

So how did I go from not even considering a relocation to literally counting down the days? To be honest I don't really know. It’s as if my subconscious kept at it always looking for the formula that would crack the code. A couple of years ago I was fed up with my job. I had a horrible supervisor who didn't understand how to manage a technical resource and I just couldn't take it anymore. I came home one day with a box of my stuff from work and told my wife, "If I don't get a new job in two weeks, we are moving to Phoenix." Sure enough I found a great job about a week later. It would seem I was not being allowed to leave Omaha. In fact some friends and family even suggested that this was a clear indicator that I was stuck here. A year later some things started clicking into place. Here I was with a job that I enjoyed, a job that challenged me and not to mention had an okay salary. My wife went back to work and I quit my second job, all of the sudden I could think clearly. After years of neglect it was time to dust off that little mental shelf. What did I find? It wasn't broken, it wasn't lost. My old dream of living in Hawaii was right there waiting for me to just ask the right questions. I didn’t even realize what I was doing at the time. In passing I’d ask my manager questions like “What’s our policy on working from home…occasionally?” A little more time would pass and here I am asking more questions. “Have we ever had a remote employee? What if I were to live in another state?” “What if that state is say…. and I’m just pulling one off the top of my head… Hawaii?" Boom. That was it.  Management considered it, and then with a little more time they considered it some more. Finally they agreed to it. Forgetting moving back to Phoenix, just like that my dream of moving to Hawaii became very real.

So why are you here? The purpose of this blog is document my family's journey to Hawaii. I haven't written in years so I apologize in advance as I will be a little rusty. If you are like me you are tired of reading blogs that don't relate to you in the slightest. I've read blogs where people detail their struggles in moving. By struggles I mean deciding which of their three mainland homes they are keeping and which are they selling to purchase their new home in Hawaii. Or smart people who have been saving for a decade and have a year’s salary sitting in the bank allowing them to spend the first 6 months on the island reading books on the beach. Not to take anything away from their accomplishment, they made a decision and followed through with it. Congrats. No this blog is for people that despite all of the things working against them refuse to give up on their dream. There is also a good chance that my situation wont relate to yours either. After all, not many people can simply decide that they want to be a remote employee 5,000 miles away from your home office. If that doesn’t do it for you, then just come for my perspective on working remotely, java development, learning Mandarin and other assorted geekery. I’ll even have guest posts from Hope and Gavin just to keep things interesting.