P45 (t-minus 16 days)

The Proclaimers once sang "Broke up from my work, the other day..." in a song called Letter from America. Now, i confess that i didn't spend the evening thinking about all the blood that flowed away, but that line was certainly on my mind yesterday.

I'd been at White Young Green for 6 years, so it was bittersweet leaving it. On the one hand I'm doing it to be with J, and in all honesty the job itself had degenerated into shitness. On the other hand, i said goodbye to a lot of good people, and it affected me more than i thought. I was given a lovely send off (posters up and down the office, and in the bathroom stalls!, and some fantastic leaving gifts to boot), and was genuinely touched by the good wishes from everyone. Not bad for a sarky IT tech.

But, i had to leave at some point, and it felt surreal standing in the cold air of the bus stop with all everything in a carrier bag, and i was a bit melancholic for the rest of the day.

However, waking up and not having to go in was a good feeling this morning, and it means I can get on with things I either should have done, or hadn't had time to do in the office.

Today seems to be about fiscal matters. I finally posted off the police check form that's been begging to be sent, although not without experiencing the vagrancy's of the modern post office (can't pay by card in this day and age?!). Bills have been settled, and i'm making a dent into all the paper work that's in drawers in the flat.

Speaking of which, i had a friend & his girlfriend come round from work on Monday to give the place a look over for rental. They pretty much liked the place from the moment they walked in, and have agreed to take it starting from February. It means i'll need to pick up the mortgage for a couple of months, but at least it'll be sorted out.

Now, what else is on the list..

Trinkets (t minus 20)

When I moved into the flat, i pretty much went through everything i owned and got rid of stuff that i'd accumulated in my 30 years on the planet. And there was a lot of it. Now that i'm on the move, i'm having to do it again. This should really have been an easy thing to do, but it's far from it.

Not due to sentimentality or such like, that came during the initial get-rid when I moved out. No, this time it's a sense of just how much one person can acquire, and just how much things really mean to you.

Books, it turns out, are the biggest example of this. To the right of me, and in the living room, there's 11 piles of books stacked roughly 10 high. By my shoddy school-boy maths, that's 110 books. And those are the ones that i've decided that I don't really need. I've never read any Tom Clancy for about 5 years, so out they go. The book of Manics photos that i scoured the book shops for, that's going too.

And then there's titles there i've never even read. All piled up waiting on a journey to a charity shop, and ready for their new life as £1.50 specials in Oxfam. Had it not been for the lashing rain and howling winds today, they would have been there already.

Now, my library numbers about 40 books, which is more than a lot of people have, but it still looks funny. I can't take them all at once either, so I need to go through them all and decide which ones i'd really like to see sitting on a shelf in J's house. And then begins the restocking of the Mitchell collection...

Not strictly true... (t minus 21)

Many moons ago, i had a blog. And it wasn't bad. A little random, but i enjoyed posting on it, and i hope people enjoyed reading it. It was an outlet for a single lad to write about things he felt he had to get out, and it lasted for 2 years.

However, i stopped writing it after I met a wonderful lady in the summer of last year. A lady who was from another continent, and who the first time we met, i probably uttered a handful of words to (and they were about Police Academy, i seem to recall). She smiled at my ramblings, but secretly i knew she didn't understand a word i'd said.

She was in my home city of Edinburgh for a holiday with her mother, and was a work colleague of an old friend from high school who is now based in her country. I didn't think my life would be changed in that meeting, but it was.

In 4 days time i finish up in the job i have worked for 6 years. In two weeks time, i will be leaving somewhere were i have lived for all my life, and where my family and friends all live within about 30 mins of my flat to head across the ocean to Canada. In three weeks time, i will be standing beside this lady as we exchange marriage vows, and then spending the rest of my life with her.

Needless to say, i can't wait. I love this girl, or Jen, as we shall call her (for that is her name) with all my heart. Having a long distance relationship is a painful thing to do when you're so far apart, so to be finally being in the same timezone as each other is enough to put a smile on the face.

This blog, or so i hope, is to be a record of one of the biggest journeys i've ever taken in my life. Whether it will suffer the same fate as my last blog is up for debate, but i aim to keep it up.

Jen, this is for you. I would go anywhere in the world to be with you.

And so it begins...