The Final Countdown

It's the final countdown - 6 weeks from today we'll be boarding our plane to London, spending some time there for an extra long layover, then heading to our new home country of Germany! I'm so excited and eager to just wrap things up at this point but I'm standing here with lists a mile long of to-do's so I must not be too eager - there is much work to be done! And a lot of goodbyes to be said.

To make it easier on my friends and family, and since we'll have no furniture in our house except for a bed after the 15th, I'm staying in a hotel in Boston before our departure just so I'm in the city, accessible, and in one easy place for all to come see me off. I can't wait to lay around in a luxury hotel for that period, use the spa, relax a little, dine out (no cooking or clean up!), and spend our final time in America in a most special way. I think the hardest goodbye will be to my mother but it is what it is... I just have to push through the pain/tears and deal with it or else it could be the one thing that makes an otherwise joyous occasion a stressful one. It's going to be nice to be back in the city, I lived and worked there for years and years and YEARS but when I left it all behind for country living in New Hampshire, which I thought I'd love, it became increasingly more difficult for me to regularly spend time with my friends there. I do love the country and parts of it I will always cherish and love - like the apple orchards and pond in our backyard and the songs of the frogs at night and the absolute quiet. But with my line of work, I need to be where there is action and opportunity and though we could have relocated anywhere in the states, I feel like I have my calling abroad and since I've been trying to get to Europe, any country I was happy to move to just as long as it was on that continent (smile), since the early 1990s and now it is just time. No more time to wonder, think about it, ponder, decide, weigh or toil. Just Do It.

image from double exposure. very audrey hepburn. swoon.

I think as we age we get this feeling of "running out of time". Do you ever experience that? You hit your mid 30s like me and start thinking you are running out of time to have children, buy a home, build your business, live in a new country, change a career, or whatever else you've been holding back from doing. Truth is, we've been running out of time since the day we were born because at that moment, we begin to age. You just don't feel it or see it or know it until you hit 30 (the age most seem to notice the signs of aging) and then some go into panic mode. I personally did not, 30 felt like 20 to me and I didn't care either way. But 35 and beyond feels differently, at least for a woman, because those critical child bearing years are NOW! and so you need to act swiftly for fear of losing your opportunity to have little ones. In addition, lots of women feel upset about age for many other reasons that have nothing to do with children. It can be their loss of energy, gray hair, wrinkles or other signs of normal wear and tear. In the end though, I think that the moment we say we are OLD we are old. Until that moment, we are young. We are as young as our mind. We are as young as our heart. And aging is so beautiful in that we have all this experience and stories and way more insight that we had 10 years prior. But the only down side to aging is that once you are in your thirties and forties and so on you are going to want to get started with your life if you haven't already because waiting for the day in which you will decide to be happy or live a dream is no longer an option. When you are 20 you can say, "Oh I can wait!" and it's perfectly fine. Waiting is not always an option past a certain point and everyone is different but each finds his own point and each knows if the opportunity is no longer there because they've now waited too long. This is how I don't want to ever feel. That's called regret. I am still very young but also I need to seriously consider starting a family at some point and I want to travel before I do so, and find a place to call home and plant roots in a community (I've not done that since living in South Carolina so for the past 16 or so years I've always felt displaced from moving so often). So this is why, though we could have relocated anywhere, we decided to go where our family and friends are, where the tree is already planted and where we can now reside and grow together with them. And I'm not about to plant myself and just do nothing from there. I have plans! More dreams! More goals! And my agent is still pushing me for work because I'm writing a decorating and lifestyle book and I need to start on this seriously in the Fall. I can't wait to be published, what an honor that will be and another dream come true since I wrote and bound my own little books in my bedroom from age 4-15. If during this move, I find some of them, I will share on this blog. But yes, I have a book to write, a storefront to open, and other big plans to jump on so I'm heading abroad while I'm still energetic and healthy enough to take all this on. Plus I'll need to go to German school weekly for about a year so my schedule is going to be jam packed. But I love a busy life filled with people and hustle bustle so leaving the country and heading to a new land is the absolute best thing for me at this stage in my life. So with alllll that being said, it's the final countdown. This past week I've sold 50% of my things with more on their way out of my door daily it seems thanks to Craigslist and close friends. I recently sold a bunch of things to a fellow blogger too who will soon drive up to meet me and pick them up. I feel so blessed that this relo is going so smoothly thus far. I also have the dealership wanting to purchase my car. Yay! I think that for an international move, things are going a little too perfectly... but I'll take it! Can you believe that I was once a relocation manager in the corporate world planning moves for executives from the USA to faraway lands and then back again? Oh yes, I did and it was exciting work. Now I'm applying the skills I learned back then today in a very personal way. Gotta love "what comes around goes around". xo, Holly