The to-dos to-move feel insurmountable.
Tears. Tattoos. Planes. Plans. Contracts. Callan.
The Irish Goodbye - First Steps
Well, here I am again. 12 years later blogging about international adventures. What happened in the last 12 years? I'll leave that to my handwritten, paper-based journals, but as you might have expected --- I found love, got married, got a dog and had a child. In that order.
Ole, the dog, and Olive, the child, are now both approximately four and at a ripe, perfect age to travel internationally, right?!
At this stage in life, after living through what it is like to birth an actual human being, I have a different perspective on this whole moving ordeal. To be clear, I've not moved domestically since having a child, so I cannot relate to that. All I speak of now is the international travel experience (which may or may not be similar).
Bringing up child birth/early parenthood here is intentional because I legitimately feel like moving internationally is akin to a birth of life....in this case, basically a life rebirth. A brand new identity is being born--- you need to establish your immigration status, insurance, housing, schooling, culture, language, friends, travel means, food choices, doctors, daily habits, question all life choices, purge and replace much of your existence (electronic and physical)....etc, etc. I'm sure at the end of this I will feel fully cleansed, but at the moment, I definitely feel like I need the equivalent of a maternity leave. There is so much to sort out! While my job ramps up, so do the requirements for paperwork to work through the major life changes ahead of us.
Today we signed the contract to put our house on the market. Our first house.. the one we spent years seeking and finally found. The one we fell in love with that served as the beautiful backdrop of so many memories. The one that connected us to our amazing network of neighbors and friends, kept us close to family, beautiful parks and community. The one we will so deeply miss.
