A little less than seven years ago, on a Sunday, I got a call from my company’s VP of HR asking if I’d be interested in moving to London for a year. On Tuesday. I used my extraordinary powers of negotiation to push the start date back to Wednesday and accepted the job. Thus began my London adventure which I chronicled in a blog called “A Year, A Broad”.
One year turned to two years, which quickly became three, and after awhile, friends and family stopped asking when I was moving back. When the first year was up, my company had wanted to transfer me to Dallas, but I wasn’t through with London, so I turned in the keys to my partially-subsidized two-bedroom apartment and sweet talked my way into a tiny flat on St. John Street before I’d secured a new job…or a valid work permit. The landlord was amused that I had the same name as an English county and said that’s why he gave me the flat. I mustered up an ever-so-charming “I haven’t heard that one before” smile and grabbed the keys.
Fast forward six more years. I’m now a fully acclimated expat. Time to go back. My boyfriend (we’ll call him “M”) got a job in Silicon Valley and we decided it was time for another adventure. I was fully on board with the decision, but found myself getting teary-eyed at various dinners and during our regular Saturday Costa Coffee mornings. I decided to stay until our lease ran out as I didn’t want the stress of another “drop everything” international move.
My move date is still a couple of weeks away but I still haven’t quite grasped that I’m leaving. I’ve had an amazing run of good luck lately and I wondered if it was a sign I should be staying, or going. I got offered free tickets to a play next week and I won free tickets to a preview film screening at BAFTA. Then at the screening, I won a raffle prize. Sweet! Part of the prize was a £50 gift voucher to a local boutique which I of course had to spend immediately. As I entered the shop pondering my good fortune and my future, I heard the song made famous by The O.C.: “California! Here we come!”.
