Seven years ago, I got remarried and then left my last full time job on Wall Street. During the following years, I’ve consulted to financial firms, volunteered for political campaigns and non profits and found my mix of work shifting more and more from Wall Street to a focus on social change. Many of my friends have told me that I spend too much time doing pro bono work and I need to be more aggressive in marketing myself and in making sure that the opportunities I take up are financially rewarding, as well as meeting my needs to help bring about social change. They are probably right. I’m working on that.

While I was working full time on Wall Street, I could easily afford our house, Orient Lodge, which this blog is named after. Yet, as I spend less and less time on Wall Street it is time to downsize. Today, we accepted an offer on our house, and assuming nothing goes wrong over the next six weeks, we will be moving.

Where will we move? Well, that depends on a lot of variables, in particular, where can I find reasonable paying gigs. It would be great to stay in the Fourth CD and help with Jim Himes’ campaign. Some good friends are encouraging us to move to Milford, close enough to still help with Jim’s campaign, but where we could also help with Kerri Rowland’s effort to become Milford’s next Mayor . Some suggest that we should move into western Milford in hopes that Kim would run for an open State Rep seat.

Milford would be great, especially if we could find a place near the water. It isn’t all the way to Bethany, which is what Kim’s father hopes for, but it is a lot closer.

Last weekend, we went to a party in the woods near Redding. A small house in the woods wouldn’t be all that bad either. For most of my work, all I really need is a good Internet connection.

Looking at it that way, moving back to the state of my birth, the great State of Maine, wouldn’t be at all bad, if I could find jobs I could do from there. Then, there is Massachusetts. My mother’s house may be going on the market soon, and perhaps I could move to Williamstown. Fiona would put in a good word for the other end of the state, out on Cape Cod.

With all the options opened up, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Washington DC or even Washington State are all on the table. A job in DC wouldn’t be all that bad since I’ll have two daughters in college in Virginia. We could live in the Virginia suburbs of DC. Kim’s dad might not be all that happy, but we would find ways of getting them together.

For that matter, if I could find a way to support myself, make sure that Fiona got a good education, and not feel too guilty about the amount of gas I would have to burn up, I would spend a few years videoblogging my way across this country, a twenty first century adaptation of Robert Pirsig, William Least Heat Moon, Jim Bronson, Charles Kuralt and any other great travel writers I can throw in. But if Maine is a pipe dream, that’s probably at least two bowls of a pipe dream.

So, as I prepare to close the final door on Orient Lodge, the house, not the blog, and peer out the window of opportunity, which people assure me God is opening, I have yet to make out the two paths diverging in a yellow wood to choose from. Instead, right now all I see is a pathless wood. Perhaps I should rename my blog, the Birch Swinger.

Into the abyss, wish us luck and Godspeed.