The Departure and Arrival: Plane Thoughts.

So, as expected. After the panic of moving comes and goes, you have start making the practical decisions. You need to pack, charge your entertainment devices, check on your flight (just to make sure), say good-bye to loved ones, and eat your favorite foods one last time.

Now comes the fun part. The endless amount of time you have on your flight to think about that huge decision you made… is this Panic: The Sequel?

So, I packed everything I owned into my 2 checked bags, my carry on and my personal bag, made sure everything that I had was charged, downloaded and printed my boarding passes and visa papers, check flight times, had Chick-fil-a for breakfast and lunch with my fam to say good-bye, and then headed to the airport.

I was heading to the Nashville airport that would send me to the Houston airport that would eventually send me flying over the ocean to a little dirt spot on the map called Australia.

The thing about long-haul flights is that you have soooo much time to think.

Like a lot.

I had 17.5 hours of thinking time and if you know me, you know that that is too much damn time for me. Having so much time to think usually doesn’t end well.

What did I think about?

I thought about the fact that I wasn’t panicking, even though I was right in the middle of a huge life change. Do we ever think about it when we are in the middle of shifting lives? I feel like every time that something huge has happened to me, I’ve always thought about it after the fact and for a long time before, but never during.

I was sitting on the plane, about 3 hours from Sydney. i had watched all the movies that I cared to watch, read all I could muster on the plane, talk to my neighbor way too much and basically had nothing else better to do that to think about what I was in the middle of doing.

My thought tended towards, “When I get off this plane, a new life starts. I’m going to have to get a sim card, go to the grocery store, find a coffee..” I had no plans other than to get picked up by my Aussie guy and head “home”.

It was hard for me to even wrap my head around the fact that I wasn’t just traveling here, but I was setting up a life.

It isn’t going to be useless now to meet new people, because these are people who I could be seeing for years. i can buy decorations for an apartment again, and furniture, which would have been unheard of for me just 6 months ago.

Luckily, my boyfriend is used to and likes the settled life and was able to get the place set-up for us without having  to deal with my panic brain, but there were times when my panic came out.

He called me one day talking about how he wanted to go get a sausage maker and some kitchen maid appliances. That’s when I lost it. Kitchen-maid!? That’s when settled old couples have in their houses, that what people have that stay home and cook with their families have.

“Yes, well, we are going to be cooking and having meals with my family, so it makes sense. ”

Damn, that’s logical.


The best way I have found to describe to people my feeling with settling down is that I am basically like a feral cat that you now want to live in an apartment. You can’t introduce me to a place and then start buying Kitchen-Aid mixers. First, I need to stay in one room for a few days without loud or disturbing noises, fed occasionally and then when it seems like it was my idea to enter a new room, you don’t make any sudden moves, just sit there until I decide that I am now a house cat.

It might take a month, might take a year, but I feel like I could maybe get into this settled life. God, I hope I can get into this settled life.

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