I’m not comfortable with long goodbye’s, tending to move ‘adieu’ events along at a good clip. For instance: We’ve spent the four summer months on a boat for the last 20 years. When my husband asked, “Should we think about selling Intrepid?” my answer was, “Okay. Why don’t we plan to find a new owner for her by the end of the summer?”
Guess what? We started advertising the sale (see: http://intrepid-for-sale.blogspot.com/ ) in July while we were in Alaska. By September 10, Intrepid had a new owner. We priced the boat fairly (without broker or title company costs) and we sold immediately. Even better, we got to work with the new owners closely, offering them a notebook of instructions for managing our boat’s unique systems, and we even got a chance to take the new owners out on the boat two times.
Yesterday, when I said goodbye to Intrepid, carrying all our good memories of years of boating in my brain and my heart, I was comfortable with the length of my ‘goodbye.’
Two months of constantly cleaning the boat for pictures and inspections; two months of tweaking the systems that needed fixing; two months of worrying that a system we HADN'T fixed would fail; two months of saying adios to all the marinas where we’ve made friends; two months of throwing kisses to our favorite anchorages. Two months is enough. I shudder to think that most boats take a year or more to sell. Not for me.
My husband is fine with the speed of our sale; I was a little worried I’d taken this particular bull by the horns, but not to worry. He was highly involved in our marketing process and today, he is as happy as I am.
So my question for you is: How are you with goodbye’s and do you worry about them being overly lengthy/painful? Could be I have a strange approach to goodbye’s because I’m an Army brat, forced to leave dozens of countries/cities after two/three years. Heck, maybe you don’t even try to manipulate your goodbye’s. I’d like to know.
As you’re thinking, here’s a look at my website and my books. Happy sales to you! Rolynn
2 comments:
I'm with you. Goodbyes are hard enough without extending them. But goodbyes are necessary. It helps us to let go and move forward. I hope you're moving forward now.
You're right, Jana. We celebrated our time on the boat and when I left her the last time, I had some words with her. She wasn't a problem-free boat... every boat has issues...but whenever she surfaced a glitch, she had us in a safe place. Amazing, really.
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