I wanted to tell you all months ago but knew I had to wait. For years I told friends I was going to quit my job and teach English in Japan and it never happened. I was scared. Every time I started researching teaching jobs the anxiety would build and I would end up on the floor trying to meditate and calm myself. I wasn't willing to jump off this cliff on my own.
Then I met The Girlfriend.
She had a similar dream, not Japan, but quitting, closing this chapter and embarking onto a new one. I met some traveling physical therapists and asked her if there were companies that did traveling contracts for her job. There were. We mad a basic plan in 2014, her lease was up in March, we'd put everything in storage, and we'd go. Two months. Then any city we wanted.
It didn't really become real till January 1, 2015. Time to put the plan into action. After a little bit of research we bought our plane tickets. The day after I grabbed two of my friends at work, closed the door and told them - I'm leaving. For the next three months it was a whirlwind of looking into buying my own health insurance, finding a place for storage, convince someone to babysit the furbabies, researching where to go and how, quitting my job, packing my posessions, and surpressing my panic attacks.
The hardest part was quitting my job. I had quit silly part time jobs in college before, but this was my whole adult career. I liked my boss, my coworkers and I recently moved into my very own nice shiny new office. It hit me harder than I expected. The week I planned on giving my notice I couldn't concentrate. A few times I had to shut my door, lie down on the floor, and do breathing exercises to clear my head. It was oddly like breaking up a relationship. And embarassingling on my last day, I cried. I was not only leaving my job, but the safety net of having an income and benefits. My life has always been planned out for me. School with the umbrella protection of my parents and their income and benefits. Then right out of college I was temping and making my own income, still under the wing of my parent's benefits till I was hired and could carry my own shield from the unknown. Now, I was separating myself from that security and going straight into the belly of the unseen future.
This was scary as fuck.
But you know what, the next day I felt calm, and preoccupied because now I had to concentrate on moving. Which I've now vowed to myself that I don't want to own any more stuff. No more trinkets I have no use for, no more boxes of forgotten things that I for some hoarder reason can't bear to let go of. Enough.
On April 1st it was all done. The prep, the stress and everything that came with it. The Girlfriend took me to the beach and we laid in the warm sand under a shining sun... on a Wednesday. It was glorious. As she napped I walked to the shore and sat watching the waves crash of the endless ocean and thought "Holy fuck this is happening." I also realized that everything will be ok.
So here I am. Eating hazelnut chocolates at our AirBnB enjoying the land of the people with the really fun to listen to accents. We caught up on a lot of much needed sleep while visiting The G's family in DC and took a red-eye to London by way of Reykjavik Iceland. I'm excited and ready to explore new countries, especially new foods.
One day at a time.
