On Buying a One-Way Ticket

So I can honestly say that the most insane, the most gloriously freeing and the most terrifying thing I have done to date has been to buy my one way plane ticket to Scotland. I don't really have a plan, that much money saved or a job when I get there. I do have a very good friend willing to put up with me while I get on my feet but that's all. It feels so crazy, but at the same time I can't help but feeling that I should have done it long before this. Why didn't I do it after my degree? Why didn't I do it after high school? What was I waiting for? Instead I finished university, and in the same insane mad rush that everyone else was in at Mac, I decided that I needed a direction. I don't regret my choice--far from it. But after a year of doing a postgraduate, working my ass off in free labour in publishing, and then getting hired on to a job doing nearly free labour I decided that I didn't need to rush into my 'direction' anymore. I needed to actually take a minute and think about things, and get into a different head space. I love living in Toronto, but for some reason my life was beginning to feel so static.

I am lucky in that I have UK citizenship (I know! I don't have to deal with the dreaded visa requirements....) and can just up and leave. I used to live in England (when I was little) so I also have tons of family there that I could have prevailed upon as well. But I didn't do it before. Why?

The truth is that I was afraid. I was afraid to leave the little safety net that I had created for myself in Toronto, in Canada. I was terrified that once I did leave, I could never come back to it--that I would be homeless or shunned or something because I left the path of having a 'career' and 'settling down' that is the ultimate direction everyone seems to want you to go in.

It then dawned on me that I was more terrified of ending up 30 and married, popping out a few kids, living in the suburbs and working for a sub-par salary for the rest of my life than I was to move away to a different country and into the unknown. And thus, an idea was hatched. And then it became more than an idea, it became a plan (as planned as a 'non-plan' can be). And then, when my stable little bubble was threatened and I suddenly found myself without an apartment and living buddy, I actually had to think about what I was going to do. And I didn't want to move to another apartment in Toronto, or sub-let, or sleep on friends couches until I found somewhere again. If I was going to do that, I might as well just do that in the UK, right? And so I booked my flight, my one-way ticket that day. I felt like vomiting when I did it and I actually cried when the travel agent told me the payment went through (probably because I was so shocked I could afford it....), but I did it. I just decided to let go and actually try something. So what if I don't have my purpose, or my career, or my husband and 2 white kids (I don't know how my kids will be white, but they will in my nightmarish vision of the future...) and white picket fence and suburbian lifestyle. To be honest I am not sure that I ever want that. What I have now is the ability and freedom to choose what I want to do with my life. Maybe that is publishing, maybe not. Maybe that is two white kids, maybe not. But the next part of it is decided: it is happening in Scotland.

So if there is one piece of advice I can give? Buy a one-way ticket, anywhere. And just go.