Backstory

Maybe it’s packing my life into 2 suitcases and only managing to bring clothes, or that I turned saying goodbye to my family into the parade of tears, maybe it is sitting alone in a whole new country trying to sort out a whole new daily life, but I have been feeling very reflective lately.

Flashback August 2013

INT. MY PARENT’S KITCHEN. EVERYDAY

Completely freaking out about my future and trying to decide what I am doing with my life. Kaytie and I had just got back from visiting Jude in Scotland and I loved it there, so I am looking at visas back to the UK.

ME

“I figure if I am just trying to find a job I can do that somewhere more interesting.”

PARENTS

“Obviously we think that is a completely ridiculous idea and that you should just go back to school, then when you have a plan move wherever you want.”

ME

“I’m not sure about back to school, two years is a long time when I don’t think I want to be a teacher.”

This went back and forth for a few weeks, and I was completely delightful during the entire process. After the kind of emotional meltdown that sends Q fleeing to her bedroom I decided I would go back to school and committed to being in Lethbridge a few years longer. Only with the understanding that the primary appeal of this degree was the opportunities it presented for travelling while working in a job that let me spend my time helping people.

For about three and a quarter of the four semesters I was in the Ed program I maintained this position. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to do this in the moment, or forever, but I liked the idea of a career that let me help people and that I could travel with. Every summer I had at least one or eleven moments where I said I wasn’t going back to school and I didn’t want to do this. Every September I went back to school, and in my last semester I decided that maybe I did like this, and maybe I could do this for at least a while. I loved my PSIII placement. I loved where I was, who my students were, and what I was teaching. It was very confusing, all of the sudden staying in Lethbridge didn’t sound like the worst fate imaginable.

It was strange all of the moving to the UK stuff was starting to take off at the exact same moment I stopped having to remind myself I was sticking this out for the adventuring possibilities. Why should anything be easy? I’ve wanted to go live somewhere new and exciting and closer to all kinds of travelling, but then it landed on the table when I was just starting to enjoy Lethbridge. In the end it was still an easy decision. I was doing this, if I didn’t do it for at least awhile I would always regret never having done it.  So here I am, all alone in my closet sized upstairs bedroom in a tiny old house in a neighborhood where everything looks the same and I still haven’t quite figured out north from south excited to start a brand new adventure.