Back from my sabbatical, time for a major change!

[Mr. Kilt]

What a way to relax and do some soul-searching. 9 days on a motorcycle trip back home to visit my brothers and old friends, plus make some life-changing decisions.

As some of you know from my previous posts, I'm currently off work on stress-related leave. I love my job as a bus driver, but I really don't like living in this city any more. There are numerous reasons behind that, but a move away from here is needed. I hate the thought of giving up a great-paying job, but it has to be done. Karen's not happy living here any more as well. Too much stress.

Karen and I have tossed around a bunch of ideas, including moving to the city of Winnipeg Manitoba. While I was there last week I checked out house prices, locations, utility and insurance rates, etc. It looked pretty good, but not great, plus we'd still be in a fairly large city.

I've been searching for properties online for the past few months, and I found a place in a tiny farming village in SW Manitoba. Quite a major change going from a city with over a million people to a village of 300. It's fairly close to the region I grew up in, and it's clean and quiet. On my way back home last week I stopped by to look the place over.

It was built in 1906 (we both LOVE old houses), it's currently being used as a combination tea house/wood weaving crafts place, and it's VERY busy. Somewhat of a local legend, in fact. We could buy the business as well as the house, but I think I'd prefer to start our own teahouse and antique/collectibles shop, something with perhaps a Celtic theme. If Pour1 can cross the globe and start his own B&B, why can't we do something similar?

Houses in this village are very affordable, especially with what our current house is worth in the crazy Calgary housing market. With what we'd clear after selling our place, we could afford to pay cash for this tea house as well as the house across the street from it. Use the tea house as the business and live in the other one and still have a pile of cash left over to invest. And if everything fails, there are trucking jobs in the region so I would still have a paycheck.

What do you people think? Keep my job here where I'm not happy living, or throw it all away to strike out on our own? I've added a couple of pics of both the yellow tea house as well as one of the huge old house across the street from it.