We came back home to our normal lives and that quiet thought remained. It continued to grow louder over the years. There was a blur of years working and maintaining. Showing up to our regular jobs and Alan lived for the hours on the weekends where he could make something, anything, just to get through another week. Eventually, he found himself working 6 days a week, sometimes 15 hours a day at his sales job. It brought us decent money, but by the time the work week was over, he had a day to recoop and get ready for another long week. There was no time for creativity, for making anything, or for spending any time together of value.
COVID hit and put Alan out of work with double pneumonia for an entire month. Our savings was wiped out covering expenses. It was discouraging. What good was a "decent job" if it took everything from you? We had no time together and there was no time for any personal life. And all it took was one round of COVID to take away the safety net that we both had worked hard for.
Our perspective had changed. We both were frustrated. We were spinning our wheels where we were at and neither of us was happy. Alan especially was struggling with his mental health during this time period. The only silver lining came when in early 2022 Alan was able to buy a second hand lathe. From the moment we brought it home I always knew where to find him. He made a small lathe shop on our front porch. We had a snowstorm (hey, in Middle Tennessee, 6 inches of snow is catastrophic y'all..) and he was on the front porch for hours working on his lathe. Every moment he got, which weren't many, were spent making beautiful bowls and items. His co-workers started ordering custom pieces from him and that quiet thought that had started a few years before became louder and louder with each passing day, until it was practically screaming in our faces.
We booked a short 3 day trip to Gatlinburg in June of 2022. We were aiming to look and see if we could find a place to both live and open shop in the Arts & Crafts Community. We had both been trying to do some research before hand. I had made a connection over facebook with one of the owners of the Mountain Arts Center on Buckhorn Rd. She had mentioned that they may potentially have a space coming available but wasn't sure when and that it did not have living space. We figured at the very least we needed a break and a trip would be good for us. So, we set off for a quick trip to the mountains.
We spent our time looking around the Arts & Crafts Community to see about rental options. We thought we would go ahead and check out the Mountain Arts Center and stop by the owners' Gallery, even though it seemed unlikely that they would have what we needed available. We arrived and were happy to be able to chat with the owners. We got to talking with them about who we were, what we had in mind for a our shop, and of course expressed that we honestly really had to have living space in order to make it work with our very tight budget. In a crazy, fated, turn of events somehow this conversation evolved into collaborating with them and drawing up plans for a shop and living space in the unit that their gallery currently occupied. They had exciting plans to open a Coffee Shop & Gallery that fall, which would work amazingly with our timing as well.
It was surreal as I stood in the Gallery and watched Alan & the owner talk about potential plans, while Alan measured out the room and began sketching a floor plan. We had told ourselves that if this was meant to happen that things would fall into place. And fall into place they did. At a very fast pace.
I also really wanted to see a bear while we were there because I had never seen one in all the times I had been to the Mountains. I kept saying this the whole trip. And on the day before we left, while exploring some towns outside of Gatlinburg I did finally see my bear. Just not in the way I had really hoped. A bear literally ran full speed into the side of our car. He came right out of the tree line. By the time I registered that a bear was running at the car, the bear had already grazed and bounced off of the side. We pulled over thinking for sure that the car was majorly damaged and wanted to look and see if we could spot the bear. He had run off right after into the woods. I felt awful of course. But as Alan pointed out that for better or worse, I did in fact see a bear. Fortunately, the car had very small cosmetic damage and the main proof that we had been run into by a bear was the bear hair stuck in my wheel. I hope that bear is out there somewhere alive and well with a healthy fear of running into the road.
We found ourselves going home with a plan and everyone was all in to make the thing happen by Fall. It was mid-June and we had a 3 bedroom home to clean out and we had many large tasks and challenges ahead of us. Our living space in our shop/apartment combo would be very small. We would be downsizing in a drastic way. While we were up to the challenge of small space living, we had almost 10 years of THINGS acquired at the home we had been living at in rural Murfreesboro, TN. We would need to get rid of about 60-70 % of what we owned.
We came home and started making plans to get ready and get everything done by early Fall. We had a tentative window of August/September for the remodel of the living space and knew that by the latest we would be moving by October 1st. It was time to get moving; literally.