My favorite part of moving to England so far is the
simple fact that I’m able to do this at all.
No matter how well this works out in the end, it’s making me feel better
about all the life choices I’ve made up to this point. It’s generally easy for me to look at other
people and see everything they have that I don’t. Does this happen to you, too? It takes effort to look at my own life and appreciate
just how lucky I am to have my life.
This is one of those times that it doesn’t feel so difficult. I am lucky.
My life rocks.
Firstly, I’m educated.
Thank you, mom and dad, for that.
They remind me over and over that they support me in whatever I do, and all they
want is for me to be able to have choices in life they never had. They never got to earn a living doing what
they loved. They did what they had to
do, and got to be with the people they loved as a result, which is not a bad bargain. But they wanted Tommy and me to go to college (an unusual choice among our extended family members) so we could have that freedom to pursue what we love. They were so right. Tommy is the engineer. I am the teacher. We both love what we do, and we both have had
the freedom to change employers when necessary.
Even the British government considers me a “skilled worker,” which is
why I could get a visa at all. Education
gives you options, pure and simple.
Also, I’m single. Being single is good. I am not
against dating or marriage, but it’s not a life goal, either. I have a hard time answering “Don’t you want
to get married?” in a way people understand.
I have never met anyone I’ve wanted to marry. If I do ever marry, I hope it will be to a woman
that wants to marry me as much as I want to marry her. I have no idea if I’ll ever meet someone like
that, much less if I’ll meet them at the right time, and I certainly have no
control over it, so why lament it? Being
single is fine. I get privacy. I get to travel when I want where I want. I got to do crazy amounts of theater stuff and general MHC craziness just because I think it's fun. When I find myself in conversation, I get to
enjoy it as long as it will go without checking in with anyone. One of the best things about being single is
that I was free to consider the offer from King’s Ely based solely on what I
wanted. If I were married, I wouldn’t be
moving overseas. And I’d be living a
happy life then, as well.
I don’t own a house.
I love not owning a house. I don’t
have to mow grass. I don’t have to fix
anything. When a job offer comes from
overseas, I didn’t have to worry about selling anything. I almost bought a house 6 years ago, right
before everything went bad. I didn't. I lucked out
there. Then again, I never agreed with
the logic of seeing a house as an investment, either. I see a house as a secure place to live until
you die. If I get married and have kids,
I will want to buy a house. If I owned a house, I would likely not be moving to England, nor would I
have had the money, most likely, to travel as I have been every summer. I’d have felt stuck. I would not have been happy. If I did buy a house, though, it would have been through Billy Sammons. That much, I know. Heck, if I buy in England, I'm taking him on international House Hunters with me.
I am very nearly debt free. This is a wonderful feeling. Debt limits options. When I graduated from IUP, I had about
$15,000 in educational debt and about $12,000 in credit card debt. Plus, I bought a new car, which put me about
$14,000 in debt for that. I won’t feel
bad about college debt, as that was an investment in my future happiness. The others were my own short-sighted
fault. My Master’s degree added another
$15,000 to my load. It took a long
while, and a little help from mom & dad, but I got out. I have resisted upgrading cars from the Enterprise-A to the Enterprise-B. I haven’t used a credit card in a
decade. I maxed out my payments on my student
loans and will be done with them in a year and a half. Less debt means more options of what I can
do. It means I could afford to take a
bit of a pay cut in order to pursue this particular dream of mine. Folks, avoid debt as much as you can. Your life options will multiply.
Also, I have a great life is that I love
what I do for a living. Not everyone gets to have that. Neither of my parents did. I won’t say “I can’t
imagine doing anything else,” because I consider the idea of there being only one career I could love as unlikely as there being only one person I could love. But I am very lucky to love what
I do for a living. It means I knew
exactly what to look for when job hunting in England. It means that, though I’m leaving a lot
behind in the USA, I will still have the career I love.
I was offered a great job in another country, and I was able to just shake hands and say yes. Life is good.
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