La première étape

I could hear the faint ringing of my alarm from the bathroom. I peeled myself out of bed at 5.45am and stumbled into the shower. The whole thing is surreal. Somehow it’s easy to believe you’ll never take the leap, you tell yourself that leaping if for others, but not for you. Well, I did it. I’m writing this aboard West Jet flight 216 en route to Montreal for the first leg of my journey. As you can see I did my editing in my “mobile” office during my layover in Calgary.

There’s a part of me struggling with all the ideas swirling around. It’s hard knowing I don’t have a plan once these 6 months are over. In some ways I think it well feel like a more sudden cutting away from everything I currently know. Because everything is up in the air and because of my love of gathering with friends I took all Saturday to devote to the great friendships I’ve made over the years. We skated, ate meals and ate an amazingly tasty carrot cake made my Cheri.

As I’m sure I’m not the only one, I hate moving. I love the idea of a fresh start but it’s so hard to look at things and evaluate its worth to you and try and decide how it’ll fit into the new life. I’ve done this so much lately it wears me down easily and brings out the gremlin inside of me. I was thankful my parents came to help but of course as luck would have it was the first major snowfall of the year and so it brought in a few extra challenges as we also tried to tie off some last minute loose ends.

Once everything was loaded into the icy cars we caravanned to Richmond where they’d booked a hotel for the evening. My dad drove home and my mom and I shopped for one last wool sweater, dinner and finally home to be joined by a few girlfriends, a few bottles of wine, a bottle of celebratory champagne. By the end of the evening it was my mom and I joined by Wilson and Jen. We had a cigar we’d been waiting to have for an occasion and I could sense I’d miss them, and so many others much more than I’d first anticipated would be possible.

It’s hard knowing I can’t take them all with me for grand adventures in another language, in another scenic location with new faces and plenty of comic relief. At least Jen has painted a romantic image of coffee and tea dates via skype which I’m sure I’ll scramble to find a beverage and little table to prop my laptop so it feels a little more realistic. I’m scared and yet so hopeful knowing I have much to learn and to become and I know my life requires more rest than I’ve ever allowed it.

So I raise my little tray table to you, because if you’re reading this, chances are you helped me get here to walk off a plane in one piece ready to take on a better life, whatever that looks like.