I’m going to open with: it’s been a while.

Not since I’ve written, not since I’ve blogged, and certainly not since I’ve engaged with social media or the rest of the internet. But it’s been a while since I’ve done any of the above with the intent of staying in touch with a big ole giant pile o’ people that I don’t get to see very often.

It’s been seven years, to be exact.

But we’re going to blaze right on past that fact (BLAZE, I tell you, as time is so fond of doing) and focus instead on the subject of dreaming. And planning. And what it’s like when those two concepts partner up in a whiz of conceptual bliss and a girl finds herself in a sixth story flat in Notting Hill, staring at a laptop screen, about to start a new job tomorrow.

I have always been and likely always will be a feels person. When it came to moving back, the feels were there. That was the dreaming part, and boy was it easy. But a planner I am not, so it is a true testament to just how much I wanted to make this happen that I did it and that I’m here.

While I was in San Jose I would spend most days off with a notebook and my laptop (this one’s named Herbie) at Peet’s Coffee, alternating between planning and daydreaming around how I was going to make all of this happen. The process involved a lot of introspection. A lot of, “How did I arrive at this point? I mean, after all, I attempted to move back every six months between 2011 and 2013. What makes this time any different? Am I actually going to do it?”

And there are a lot of different answers to those questions. Boiled down, though, to their barest, you get one thing: timing. So much in this world comes down to timing, and my life was just the same. This time, I had a company that could support my transfer. This time, I was able to buckle down and pay off a ton of debt. This time, I had a jumping off point and an invaluable support system on both sides of the Atlantic. And this time, it was my last chance. Because, well, Brexit.

I can trace this entire process back to the end of the summer of 2012. My dual citizenship process had stagnated but I was reveling in reconnecting with one of my oldest friends while I was still living at home. And then two things happened: my grandmother fell and broke her hip, so my parents had to move to San Diego to help her, and that old friend suddenly passed away in an accident, so I just as suddenly needed some distance.

So I moved to San Diego and upon arriving found out my citizenship application was ready to be turned in. I made an appointment at the consulate for the following spring, two weeks after which I met and started dating my last boyfriend. When I got the call a year after my appointment that I was officially a dual citizen, we were living together and I was about to buy a car. Moving to England was, to say the least, on hold.

Six months later we’d broken up and I’d decided to focus on my career. I’d gotten my own store with World Market and I’d moved to Orange County.

And roughly six months after that, I wore a pair of pants from Anthropologie to work, and a customer that worked for Anthropologie casually tried to recruit me out of my store. That was May of 2015. I moved to San Jose to start working for them in April the following year.

Two years later, it’s April 3^rd, 2018, and I start my job with Anthro EU tomorrow at 8am.

It’s hardly a direct path, I know. It certainly felt indirect while I was living it. But knowing where I landed and what I went through, it is so easy to see how many seemingly innocuous little moments completely changed my plans. And that makes me so much more confident, and happy, and relaxed about what the future holds. Keep on keeping on – with your eyes wide open – kick some ass, and have the patience to wait out that timing, and nothing can stand in the way of what you want to get done.

All you need is a little daydreaming. (And planning.)

Now, that being said:

This blog is going to be almost 100% what I’ve come to mentally tag as pers/misc: personal miscellaneous. For the first time in my internet presence I’ve linked all of my social media accounts to it as well (#omnichannel), and not for the last time most of what I write will seek to alternately amuse, enlighten, entertain, and keep me in touch with the lot of you.

I hope you all enjoy!