…. Ten days ……
We begin the final countdown today with 10 days to go! Today is also 4 years since I became a Professor, so it’s a day of reflection.
The practical stuff is almost sorted, which is not a sentence I expected to be typing with this much confidence a fortnight ago. Luggage is nearly done. New glasses arrive tomorrow. A few more bookings have gone in. Smudge has decorated his suitcase and is considering his Instagram strategy! We are hoping to meet a couple of his friends while out there, which should be entertaining!
It is becoming real
For months this has been a plan, a spreadsheet, a countdown, admin with a departure date at the end of it. Since we got below 20, it stopped being that and started being a thing that is actually happening to me, soon.
I keep having conversations where I am very aware that I won’t see this person again until I’m back. That catches me off guard every time, because these are people in my everyday life. You don’t usually have to say goodbye to your everyday life. You just live in it. A few years ago the concept I’d have so much and many people to miss would have seemed a dream, I know I am truly very lucky!
Why I’m doing this
Underneath the countdown and the cowboy hat jokes is the actual reason, and I keep coming back to it whenever the nerves get loud. I think about the people our community has lost. The people who’ve broken. The people who’ve had to leave. The people quietly struggling right now while still turning up and doing the job. I want to learn things that might genuinely help, and bring something useful back for the field. However scared I get about the whole concept, that pushes me to keep going. I am so fortunate to have a good job, at a fantastic place, with equally fantastic people. I am also fortunate to have a voice in so many places, and to not have any pressure about how I use it. Therefore with the privilage of a voice, I want to ensure I highlight what the community needs!
The quieter reason
There’s a personal reason too, one I’ve known in theory for a long time, but struggle to connect with and focus on. Work is easy for me to disappear into. It’s familiar, it’s absorbing, it’s somewhere I already know how to function and be good at things. There is always another useful task. That’s not nothing, work matters, but it also means I can spend years avoiding the fuller life I actually want, because the work is right there, being important and giving me somewhere safe to hide inside being busy.
This trip is me saying enough. I need to change my stars, grab life, and live. Less work focus, more time on the bike, exploring the English countryside and castles.
My brain has thoughts about this
Naturally, my brain has responded to all of this sensible reasoning by producing an increasingly impressive list of reasons I cannot possibly go. There is work to finish. Something needs organising first. Perhaps, my brain suggests, the entire eight-week international research fellowship should be quietly postponed until the inbox is clear, which is a bit like postponing a wedding until you’ve tidied the airing cupboard.
The pull towards the familiar is strong. It’s familiar, not right. I know exactly why I need to get on the plane anyway, and I am trying to hard to keep going right now.
Trying to say goodbye properly
I’m trying to see as many of the people who matter to me as I can before I go, and it’s proving harder with some people than others. Not because I care less. I’m just bad at saying so out loud, and I think that gets mistaken for not minding. It isn’t. If I’ve gone quiet lately, or if I give confusing signals about whether I care it’s not that you’ve dropped down the list! Some people, it feels like our work diaries are on opposite schedules right now, hopefully just because of life, and it makes it harder to say goodbye, and more emotional to go! 8 weeks has not felt like such a long time since I was a child!
The good bit, again
Then there’s everything I’m actually excited about, which is allowed to sit right alongside the scared and sad bits without cancelling them out. The bookings, the zoos, the tours, the geek things, the history. The almost-finished packing.
I can be frightened and thrilled. I can be sad about the goodbyes I haven’t managed and still completely certain this is the right thing to do.
Ten days
I don’t need to feel ready to go. I don’t think anyone ever does. I know why I’m going, and I want to bring something worthwhile back.
So with TEN days to go …. I can do this ….. I am going to do this! Smudge, meanwhile, would like everyone to admire his suitcase …. and remember he’s a very popular bearfluencer who will be documenting the whole trip!
…. To be continued!