He's not going to be a coal miner. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I know I'm always whining on about how we can "never go back to West Virginia." It all sounds so dramatic like we're wanted by the Poe-lease or in debt to a crime lord. The simple truth is, though, it IS highly unlikely we'll ever be able to go back to live. At least not while my husband is a structural engineer. And since he loves bridges and piers and concrete girders and all manner of other structural things, I don't see him deciding to be a coal miner any time soon.

Not that there is anything wrong with that.

We both come from a long line of coal miners. My Dad is involved in the coal industry but from a regulatory side.

But, the point is, there have been many Engineering firms pull out or downsize their WV offices. I should know as my husband has worked for most of them at one time or another. And now things are only getting worse. The governor has gone to war with the engineering community over how selections for projects are done. J. keeps his finger on the pulse of what is going on there and it's bad. Really bad. More engineering firms will end up leaving the state and they'll either take a whole slew of young professionals with them or they'll leave behind a bunch of unemployed engineers, CAD techs, administrative assistants and empty office space. The state has already lost over 55 firms.

And what happens is now you only get a couple firms competing for the jobs. Without competition costs will rise and quality will slip. And you also get a whole lot of professionals forced out of the state. Maybe Joe is trying to squeeze tourists dollars out of us knowing we'll come back to WV to play? Who knows.

So, that leaves me here in Indiana whining about wanting to go home and knowing we can't. WV holds a place in my heart and my life. Our families are there and we thought our future would be there. What we found though was that it wasn't worth hanging on to. Sure, J probably could have found a job with the state in the WVDOT. We thought about it. HARD. But the pay cut was just too much. The cost of living in WV is a lot more than here. And in the end we realized, yeah, we can be bought. My parents and brother and his wife bring boxes and coolers when they visit us to raid our grocery stores.

We've sold out to the man.

Will we be in Indiana long-term? Well, that is under some debate at the moment. We're faced with a big decision. One we'd hoped to have more time to make. Some things we thought were settled seem not to be. I'm a tiny bit stressed, excited, scared and confused. We're sticking to our new motto. "Only go forward." We took too many steps back trying to stay in WV for those last few years. We ended up broke, sad and moving anyway.

We are at a point where we have to decide. We have to CHOSE to stay here. Have we made Indiana enough of our home to CHOSE to stay? Or should we strike out and try someplace new? At this point only time will tell.