Ten years ago, Steve and I finished our master’s degrees at the Eastman School of Music and set out to build careers in music.

We decided to make a move that was less common in our field at the time: Instead of heading to a big city with lots of opportunities to begin a freelance career, we moved to a small town in rural Massachusetts.

That became the impetus for everything that followed.

I’ve set boundaries on my email before, but they’ve never stuck for the longterm. Can you relate?

Somehow, I always find myself back to that place of constantly checking my email on my phone throughout the day (sometimes, without even thinking about it). It’s the first thing we reach for when we wake up in the morning and one of the last things we do before we fall asleep at night.

But why check it if you’re not going to respond right away? Why let those messages take up valuable mental space?

You see, I’m one of those people who tends to overthink things. I’m a slow processor and sometimes, it takes me a lot of time to craft the “perfect" response. So, if an email lands in my inbox that needs a thoughtful reply, I let it sit. I tell myself I’ll think about what to say or how to say it. And so, I do. All afternoon. While I’m trying to work on other projects. There’s that email in the back of my head, using up mental energy as I write and rewrite and edit a response in my head. 

Buying a home is a huge step in life, and though they make it look so simple on TV, it is no easy feat. Especially if you're a freelancer. Since SD and I are both freelancers, this meant our home-buying process was a little more complicated and drawn out than "normal." For those of you who are thinking about and planning for buying a home at some point, here is an inside look at our process, with a few helpful tips thrown in for good measure!

Gather Financial Documents

The first step in our mortgage application process was to pull together several documents:

- Tax returns (last two years)
- W-2s (last year)
- Pay stubs (current year)
- All bank statements
- checking, savings (last two months)
- Investment accounts
- Roth, IRAs (last quarter)