Not an April Fool
I considered waiting a day to post this, given the date. But that felt like exactly the kind of hedging I am trying to stop doing. So here it is, April first, and I mean every word.
I am leaving. Not dramatically, not all at once, not tomorrow. But the direction is set and the decision is made and I am done pretending otherwise.
The Ligurian coast. That is where I am pointed. I have Italian citizenship, have had it for nearly 30 years, and I have spent most of those 30 years treating it like a party trick at dinner rather than a door. It is a door. I am walking through it.
I have been in Delaware for about three years. Before that Boston. Before that the DC area, where I grew up. I have spent my whole life in places I landed rather than chose. This one I am choosing.
In two weeks I am on a plane to Genoa for a scouting trip. A week on the Ligurian coast, walking the waterfront, sitting in cafes, asking myself whether this is the place. I already suspect I know the answer. I think you have to go anyway, to let the place confirm what you already feel.
The selling has started. The stuff is going. Fifteen years of accumulation, curated and collected and now ready to move on. It does not feel like loss. Mostly it feels like relief. There is something clarifying about holding an object and asking the question honestly: does this come with me or does it go? Most things go. That turns out to be fine.
Remy is coming. Quito is coming. The EU pet passport bureaucracy is real and I am working through it. They do not know any of this yet. Remy will adapt immediately. Quito will be furious for approximately two weeks and then find a sunny window and decide it was her idea.
I am 49. I will turn 50 in September. I have no idea if there is a symbolic significance to that timing or if it is just a coincidence I have chosen to find meaningful. Either way, here I am.
This journal is the honest version of all of it. The planning and the fear and the occasional absurdity and the moments that remind me why I started. I will write it as it happens. No April fool.