i’ve moved on
ask me for my new URL if you don’t have it.

I have a mini zen garden in a box, with three tiny rocks and a little rake.

Every time I move, and I tip the sand in my zen garden back into its packet, I never get all of it in. Inevitably, some of the grains spill out of the sides. And every time I unpack the zen garden, it’s got just a little less sand in it than before.

Many, many long hours of thought, an email back-and-forth, and a phone conversation with my parents later, I think I have finally come to a decision on what to do next year. Much of the finer detail still needs to be worked out, much of it is a plunge into the unknown, there are things I need to research, people I need to inform – but at least I know which fork in the road to head down. I think. I think. I hope.

I would love for a day to come when I no longer have to worry about losing all the sand in my zen garden. I’d love to tip it out once and for all and sit it on a windowsill for the rest of its life and mine, as zen gardens should be – still, tranquil, immovable havens. That day is not to be… yet. But I’m slowing down; if my wandering days aren’t quite yet over, there is, at least, an end in sight.

I promise to be a little less vague about all this when I actually get round to acting on this decision (rather than turning it over and over in my head fretfully). In the meantime – life, and more steadily trickling grains of sand, await.

Change is in the air.

I have been thinking a lot, lately, about lasts, and firsts, and leavings and beginnings. Our director and my manager have gone on maternity leave one after the other, there are new bosses to get to know, new responsibilities and tasks to get used to at work, a new room in a new house – though I have settled in so well here that it feels I’ve been here far longer than a week. My housemates are great, things are really, really relaxed, and I couldn’t be happier.

But then, as always, there is the future. And it is the future mainly I have been thinking of; it is becoming increasingly likely that this may be my last year in England, depending on how things go visa-wise. Where do I go from here? Do I buy a return back to Singapore in December so I can come wrap things up here before leaving for good next year? Or should I just buy a one-way… and not look back? Should I settle in Sydney with my family? Go straight back to Singapore? Or… try my darndest to wrangle immigration laws into my submission and find some way of staying here? I feel there is still much I can learn from being in this country, and if I do leave next year it wouldn’t be by my choice, but sometimes there is a lot more going on that’s larger than you.

There is a whole world out there, and… I guess I needn’t restrict myself to the warm and familiar when considering my next move. There are many places I could go and many things to see. And I know, for certain, that this is the time to keep working overseas if I want to; I’ll never find a window of opportunity like this again once I settle down in Sydney or Singapore, or at the very least – it’ll be that much harder to just up and go. But then – do I want to? That’s the million-pound question, isn’t it. Are my wandering days over? Is it time to stop being a nomad and set down roots, at last? I don’t know, I just don’t know.