AND JUST LIKE THAT, THE YEAR OF THE KIWI IS OVER! Fast year, eh? One of those mini-years; a year-lette if you will.
I’m writing this from Australia–where I am staying for 8 days and LOVING IT–and I’ve yet to grasp a single wisp of inspiration as to how to properly summarize my end-of-days in New Zealand. Rest assured, I wasn’t forced out legally.
Let me instead hurl some of my revelations at you:
- I was brave. Emily J. Poprocks is, for better or worse, a dreamer and not so much a doer. ‘Doing’ wrinkles your clothes so you have to do laundry; it makes you hungry and then you have to go grocery shopping again; it makes failure a possibility.
But I DID move across the world! I figured out how to make a phone plan work, opened a foreign bank account, and found a home and a job and ukulele. I started an inconsequential drawing club that I loved. I made plans and kept some of them and missed a flight and jumped off a waterfall and drank different coffee and got lost and I can’t wait to do it again somewhere new.
- I made the sweetest, strangest friends.
This is not to say that my pre-New Zealand friends were not sweet or strange because of course I only associate myself with borderline mythical creatures whose epidermises are covered in powdered sugar. I was just surprised that I made real, actual friends that I genuinely want to–and know I will–see again! #Europe2019
- I have a weirdly rigid work ethic, but not in a good way. Once I found a job it was all over for spontaneity. Must work on this (but not like work work.)
- I HATE A ROUTINE. It was nice to feel like I knew what was coming at me on the cosmic freeway, but having a schedule and bills with my name on them made me want to climb up a tree and never come down. So instead of staying put another 6 months, I’m moving to Hawaii.
Maybe I’ll go back one day and maybe I won’t, but New Zealand will always be part of me, like an extra kidney or maybe an important vertebra♥
Stay tuned for a forthcoming anthology on the virtues of Melbourne, land of graffiti!