Danita is a genius at inventing TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) as memory aids.

Recently she came up with a set which seem to work naturally together.

TIT, BUM and LEG.

TIT – Trust In Tasmania
Not long after we moved here a friend who lives in Hobart made the comment that Tasmania has a special level of spiritual energy and things work out differently here.

We’ve noticed that as well.

Things that seemed complicated overwhelming or even impossible seem to happen here with relative ease (provided we can manage to keep out of the way).

For example, when we were moving here we booked into a short-term rental (air-bnb) for one month.

We expected that would give us time to find ourselves a suitable place to rent for a year.

Our plan was, to rent for a year and within that time we’d find ourselves a place to buy, which we could call home.

We spent a lot of time during that month looking for a suitable house.

Danita did most of the leg-work and I saw only the better selection.

Even then there were very few places we felt we could actually live in.

We quickly developed the belief that owners of rental properties were not locally based and the level of neglect of the properties was scary.

There was one place we were both drawn to but it was outside our budget and it wouldn’t become available until quite a while after our short-term rental expired.

BTW extending the air-bnb wasn’t an option as it already had the next booking already in place.

The landlord for that property was a lovely guy (as we’ve come to find that is pretty typical here) and did offer to see if we’d be able to rent his parent’s holiday house.

We needed to spend a few days in Launceston and managed to find a very cute farm-stay that would work for us.

By the time all this to-ing and fro-ing had finished the house we had shown an interest in became available and even though it was outside our budget we decided it would be the best option.

Thus we can to be living in a gorgeous location overlooking Bass Strait, the Don River and across to Devonport and beyond.

That was our first really BIG example of learning to Trust In Tasmania (TIT).

There have been lots more examples and we are constantly grateful for them.

BUM – Build Up Momentum
One of the challenges we (and many people) face is to keep going when we hit obstacles.

In attempting to do anything of value there will be unavoidable obstacles and difficulties.

An example is the face that we couldn’t find anywhere suitable to live which I outlined above.

It’s important to keep going and do whatever is in front of you and not be disheartened.

A comment often attributed, incorrectly, to Winston Churchill is; “If you’re going through hell, keep going”.

While Churchill may not have actually said it, it is great advice.

And so we look for ways to build momentum.

This can be as simple as making sure something is done on the project every day even if it’s as basic as checking out the latest realestate listingseven though we aren’t yet ready to be buying.

LEG – Let Expectations Go
John Lennon said: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

(While Lennon did include this statement in his song “Beautiful Boy” in his album “Double Fantasy”, released in 1980, it can be traced back to Reader;s Digest in 1957.)

When Danita and I first came to check out Tasmania in a very short exploratory visit, we drove through Devonport and we both felt it was a place to avoid it for any future prospects as somewhere to live.

It seemed to be very industrial.

When we started looking for a short term rental that would enable us to arrive and give us a month to find somewhere more permanent (on a temporary basis) our requirements were pretty straight-forward, or so we thought.

We needed one month in a house big enough to allow us to keep working and where we could have our dog, Sancho.

Turns out it wasn’t as simple as we thought and the only place we could find was in Devonport.

Once, we settled in and started to find our way around the new town we discovered, to our delight, that we were totally misguided in our thinking and Devonport has become our home.

So often we find that life doesn’t work out the way we expect it to and by holding onto expectations, whether they are about a place to live or how we expect other people to behave we will only cause ourselves pain and anguish if we hold on too long.

And so, our life in Tasmania has been about TITs, BUMs and LEGs.

I hope that works for you as well.