Following The Stream

This is happening.

It still doesn't feel real. Maybe it won't be real until I step off the plane on October 8th and answer customs questions on the other side of the world.

I've come to live here for a year. My husband is here to run his business in Japan.

We've been accepted. The plane flight and AirBnB are booked. Conversations with the realtor are kicking into overdrive.

Right now, I sit in a plush green wingback chair in the first coffeeshop I fell in love with in Spring, Texas. What was once the Blue Giraffe soon sold to the up and coming Trilogy Brew, but the low-key funky vibe didn't change too much over the years. Other coffee shops have come and gone in my list of favorites, but this is my old standby.

The employees tend to control what plays over the speakers, and it's usually somebody's Spotify playlist. Today it's fairly easy-going singers with a little bit of pep and a touch of wistfulness to their songs. There's two other patrons in here with me, and every now and then I catch a fragment of their sentences. I understand what they are saying. The baristas are talking to each other, and I understand that too.

The familiar falls away.

There is melancholy in that thought if I dwell on that side of it. I could go down this rabbit hole of all the people and places I will miss--which is true. But there's another way of facing it.

I'm about to go on an adventure.

I will find a new favorite coffee shop. I will have to learn how to ask for my favorite drink in a new language. Can I do that right now, I wonder?

One decaf mocha with hazelnut please. Hot.

Hitotsu ____ _____ ___ ______ onegaishimasu.

If I cheat and look it up, it's: Dekafe moka, hēzerunattsu iri o hitotsu kudasai. Hotto de onegaishimasu.

Hey, I was right about two words, if not the placement of both. Dekafe is going to be an important word for me to know.

There are endings. I regretfully said goodbye to my Introvert Front Porch Book Club partner, leaving him a handmade blanket and a tupperware full of freshly baked bread knots instead of a book this time. I will not have the focus to continue exchanging titles in the time I have left.

I have to pack up my yarn and ship it all to my middle sister, who will be able to make use of it.

I have to shut down my ko-fi shop, pack up my hats, and ship them off to Hatsgiving in September.

I have to get the phone battery replaced. And the rings cleaned. And the ceiling fixed and the sprinkler system put in.

I thought I would be able to finish a first draft of The Remara Phenomenon before I left, but I have burned out. I don't know where to take the story arcs, and maybe I need to sit back and let the dreamer part of my brain brew some more. Or maybe it's time to take the arcs as story seeds and expand them into their own novels. In either case, at 104k words I have still surpassed the wordcount needed for a full fantasy novel at this time, and I will take that as a victory.

What do you even take on a year-long trip if you're planning on buying most of what you'll need on the other side?

I've never been in better shape, which will make the move less difficult on my body. I did the hardest hike in our repertoire--Fletcher's Ridge on Catalina Island--in 35 minutes flat this year. The first year I did that hike, it took me an hour and fifty minutes. I've begun lifting weights at the gym, too. I can do 3 sets of 20 easier lifts with 12.5lb weights, and 3 sets of 20 harder lifts with 10lb weights.

We just found a church community here in Spring. Now we're leaving. But we have many leads about churches in Tokyo. Surely we will find a community there.

I will miss people. A cousin and an aunt just moved into town, and I have a few months to visit them before I leave. I will be leaving behind my Mom and Dad. My youngest sister is taking off for her job in California in just under two weeks. My middle sister, well. I got to say goodbye in person earlier this year, out in Pennsylvania.

I'm tired. I want to write down my thoughts, but they scattered. Every time I'm not sitting in front of the screen, I have ideas for ten blog posts and in-depth explorations of ideas I'm churning through. They're often shot down as too pretentious, or too religious, or too something before I reach the keyboard. I ought to knock that off, because the alternative is this stream-of-consciousness leaking out of a tired brain that is contemplating an upcoming early-mid-life upheaval.

What do I do with the new shells I dove for in Gallagher's Cove?

On a whim, I go through all the Shazams of the last eight months and add them into my playlists. I need some good new music.

Everything is going to change.

It's time to pack up and head home. There's a dinner appointment tonight. I fill up my task manager a day or two in advance with things that need to be done and people I need to see.

But for a moment, I sit in a plush green wingback chair next to a table with an empty coffee cup and listen to somebody else's Spotify playlist. Somebody else's conversation with their kids. Somebody else's coffee order.

I will miss this. But it has been good.

Time for something new.