4 days

To effin' soon. I'm so excited and nervous, it honestly still doesn't feel real.

Overwhelmed

Three weeks. Three weeks and I will be in London. Considering how insanely fast the last 6 months have gone, I'm starting to stress out about getting everything that needs doing done. Which in turn makes me less likely to get anything done. But hey, at least I'm up to date on Scandal and How To Get Away With Murder.

I'm downsizing seriously before I go and last weekend I took a lot of my stuff down to Manjimup. I'm pretty proud of how much of it was assigned to the garage sale/donation boxes and how little I kept. I actually had an amazing time down there, which hasn't always been the case when I visit home. I got to hang out with my mum a lot and help her with some house stuff which was nice. I ran into exactly no one that I knew from high school, which is exactly how I like it. Plus I got to go for a ride in Big Blue and the 'turquoise' Moke which was fun.

This is a bit disjointed but it feels good just to write it out and accept that I'm making a massive move and feeling overwhelmed is completely normal. Everything is going to come together as it should. I've got accommodation sorted, people to pick me up from airports and it is all going to be a grand adventure.

Wow

So today I had my consulate visit, I'm pretty sure it went well and that I'll be getting my passport/visa in the next couple of days. After the interview I was so happy I felt like I was going to cry (obviously I didn't because a healthy expression of emotions is not how I do) now 11 hours later it has kind of all hit me. This is actually happening. I've been talking and thinking about this since my first semester of uni and now it's a real thing that is going to happen.

And now I'm kind of terrified.

I mean, it's not that I haven't been away from my family/friends/Australia for extended periods of time. The first summer was 6 months (with a tinge of homesickness/loneliness not hitting until the last couple of weeks), the second and third were both about 5 months and normally I'm 4 hours away from my parents and only really see them (or just mum) when we have footy matches. But all of that time away was holidays, I knew I was coming back. I had a date and I knew that it would end and even though I was planning to go back, it still finished.

This time, I have a one way ticket. I don't have a plan for once my 14 months is up, heck I don't even have a plan for the 14 months. I have general ideas but I'm basically just winging it. Plus there's the fact that I have way less money saved then would make me feel comfortable. This is scary. Really scary.

And that in itself is exciting. I think I need this. All year I've been saying that things will happen when they're supposed to not when you want them to (I'm sure I stole it from somewhere, someone, a movie that I've never seen) and right now that couldn't be truer. Let's do this.

Oh the joys of visa photos. Hurrah!

A first post.

I have no idea why I am finding this post so hard, possibly because I have no idea who is going to read it and am worried that everything I write will just sound wanky and ridiculous. But since my motto for the year is "try something new" I'm just going to smash it out and I can always edit and delete it at a later date.

So, England, Ireland, and the USA. Thats the plan. So far I have booked my flight to London, arranged a friend to stay with (by arranged I mean that I've let her know when I'll be arriving) and thats kind of it. To be completely honest, I've been to London before and I didn't love it. It was a weird time in my life and while I went and saw most of the sights nothing really stuck with me as being amazing. I spent most of my time sitting in parks reading £2 Penguin Classics and eating alone. I have much higher hopes for this visit because I get to spend a week with Rald and will hopefully also get to see Sketch and as much as I love cool old shit, catching up with friends that I haven't seen in years is much more exciting.

With the Ireland portion of my trip, I guess that I've technically kind of looked at getting there via the train/ferry (£38, leaving a whole bunch of times that's something to worry about much later) which is a start. Plus I've paid to attend the Hens weekend in Athlone (which is definitely a place that I had heard of before ... yeah no) and RSVP'd to the wedding. Those are really the two most important parts of the organising of the trip so I'm basically prepared. I think I'll be splitting my time between Wicklow and Galway with actual plans to come together closer to the date. It's still over a month until I leave so theres plenty of time.

As for the USA, I am still in the process of getting all of that together. I scheduled my consulate visit today for the 23rd of October which feels like it's further away than it is. That'll be the moment of truth and decide whether I need to panic and come up with a back up plan or not. I'm feeling super positive about it all so lets just hope that that is a good sign.

I'm not 100% sure about the content that I'll be posting here, I guess it will become more clear as the trip gets closer and I have more exciting things to say than "haven't really planned much, she'll be right". I'm hoping to invest in a nice little camera so that I can take pretty pictures of all of the cool places I end up visiting, I should get on that. This entire blog will probably just end up being a way for me to keep track of things I should be doing.

God I hope this doesn't end up being the only thing I post.