Winds of Change Are A Blowin'

And where was I the last time I came by? Oh yeah, I had just come back from a conference in Seattle. So much is changing right now, the biggest of them all is that I think the time has come to move west for personal reasons. The time is now and I don't think it's something I can wait and push out any longer. The time to do it is now. I'm plunging into some unknowns but I hope I land upright. I'm in kind of a very interesting place right now, knowing this is my plan but it's kind of overwhelming that I need to make it happen, and have a plan moving forward. I'd like to stay in the same field (professionally), I think but I have a good skill set (I think? hope?) that if I don't see the exact niche I'm in now (which is kind of hard to custom-order), I hopefully have some options, with a bit of luck and resourcefulness and networking. Sometimes it's all about timing, too, so we'll see.

If you had asked me to map out my life course in 2014 or 2015, or even last year, I would not have predicted or even planned on this, on my own terms.

I think that moving west will be for the better. I need to move closer to where I have more family support, like living near my sister, for a change, and I'm needed to help w/ my parents and their eldercare and to cherish time with them while I help in whatever way I can. I also am realizing how not sustainable it is to be taking FMLA even if in increments every 2-4 weeks, rather than in one large chunk of time. All the travel is wearing me out and is expensive, and so it's all for the better.

When did I decide? I guess really earlier this spring, although I suppose that the seeds in my mind started germinating earlier than that, probably when I saw the chronicity of the situation. After my mom's stroke i had no reason not to assume she'd just bounce back and while she'd never be the same, she'd recover gradually and would actively be doing lots and lots of OT, PT, and speech therapy. I figured that eventually I could start easing up on the visits, and spacing them out or going less frequently.
But the reality is a bit different and so that distant general thought of "oh I'll move closer to family one day when the time is right" is now instead a realization that "the time to do it is now, and why wait?".

So yeah, that's about what's new here. Exciting, scary, much unknown, lots to do before that happens maybe in a few months.