On our way ....

GLAD to say it, but I've just survived the worst week ever.

This time last week, I was up to my ears in bubblewrap and boxes trying with all my might to safeguard my precious belongings as they prepared to set sail on their 10,000 mile journey south.

Over the course of the week, I had developed two heaps of possessions - the one in the former games room was to go with us to Australia, the second, under the stairs and encroaching into the hallway, was there for the taking. Any callers went home with a trinket or two of the tat we've accumulated over the past 20-odd years - whether they wanted them or not.

So, last week, I had the mammoth task of keeping life in general ticking over, working full time with some extra curricular projects thrown in for the festive season and sorting out which parts of my life were to go down under and which I could palm off on friends and family.

Mum went home with a couple of car loads - from lamps and lilos to plants and pictures - she's keeping hold of them for me until I return from my adventure, then I can have it all back. And I thought I'd seen the back of it! The thought of being reunited with all my junk is enough to make me want to stay in Melbourne for good but I have to stick with the thoughts that jumble around in my brain that my international jet-setting move is not going to be forever.

Yes, we are looking at flights that come heavily labelled as "SINGLE" and the one-way flight thought has come as a bit of shocker but, at the end of the day, there's nothing stopping me buying another one-way ticket at the other end in order to get my butt back over here.
I wish I had an Aussie dollar or even a fine English pound for each time someone has consoled my pre-departure tears with "You can always come back if it doesn't work out ....."

That way, I could feel rest assured in the fact that I've jacked in my job that I've had for the past 16-odd years and feel comfortable with the fact that I will have no money to splurge on the things I want to come the bleak, cold and dank days of January.

I will have no house, no car, no job and no bank account ... but on the upside, I WILL have great family, great friends and an even greater drive and determination to get out there and see a bit of what the big, wide world has to offer me.

Pass me that box of Kleenex won't you ...?