a big news post about big news

have you heard? I’ve got big news

big news number one

Rachel, you ask me, why haven’t you posted anything in a few weeks?

Reader, I reply, because we found out in May that we’re moving from Spain to Germany in June!!

I’m not sure how many of you have moved from one country to another, but this will be my fifth country move and I can tell you it does not get easier. In fact, it actually gets progressively harder.

When I moved to Prague I had one giant suitcase and the biggest carry-on I could manage. (Sometimes I wish I had photographic evidence of what I looked like before and after my 48-hours of travel from Spokane, Washington to Prague. Most times I am glad I don’t.)

When we moved from Prague to Manchester we left all the furniture behind and had about three pieces of art to worry about. (We do have some photos of this, but I’m not digging them up because I’m busy because I’m moving, have you heard?)

When we moved from Manchester to Amsterdam we had picked up some bits of furniture, way more art, and a giant TV. (Same photo situation as above.)

From Amsterdam to Barcelona we moved all our furniture (and, like, 30 pieces of art, seriously who do we think we are?), but this time Tom’s employer funded the whole move and we got to experience the ultimate luxury: having people pack our stuff for us. Seriously. If you ever need to move and you can afford this, do it. It is obviously wonderful on the packing end, as you don’t have to do anything literally at all, but less obviously helpful on the unpacking end because your stuff has been packed by professionals.

This time we’re back to packing by ourselves and I have been overwhelmed with all the little decisions that need to be made when you pack an entire home into boxes; especially as we’ll be living in a temporary flat for three months and most of our things will be in storage for the duration.

Anything that doesn’t involve some kind of packing, or preparation for packing, or preparation for setting up in a new city, seems like a waste of my time and energy. I know, intellectually, that continuing to do things like reading, writing, and my yoga practice are essential to holding on to my sanity. But I am struggling.

big news number two

I had a poem published in the second issue of Y2K Quarterly! It’s a new lit mag focused on the vibes of the late 90s early 00s, basically talior-made for Elder Millennial Nostalgia in the best way. My poem “hot topic exclusive” is about how nervous I was to enter the Hot Topic when I was a shy, awkward teen. The other poems and stories in the issue are fantastic, particularly this one called “Looking Up on 9/11/01”.

My creative spirit really needed something positive. I’m proud of myself for learning to love rejections, but this spring I was ghosted by a supposedly “friendly, alternative” lit mag and it is so much worse. Mostly because I feel like a fool. The poems I sent them were more experimental than I’ve tried submitting before and I thought that, at worst, I would receive a blandly kind rejection. Not hearing back, even after a 3-month follow-up, is shitty.

big news number three

Long-term readers will know that I have been bothered by Spain’s timezone nonsense for as long as we have lived here. Spain, to show its support to the Nazis, decided to be part of the Central European Timezone in 1940. It has really fucked with my whole sleeping and waking schedule this entire time. When we move to Berlin we will still be in the same timezone, even though we’re going 1,872 kilometres northeast.

I am so excited to live in the correct timezone again!

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I would love to promise that I’ll keep up a kind of “moving diary” over the next two weeks of the most intensive packing, travelling, and settling in. I would love to promise that and I would love to be the kind of person who could do all of those things at the same time, or to be the kind of person who could have pre-written a moving diary to post during the move to make it look like I’m the kind of person who can write while moving countries. I would love all of that, but that is highly unlikely to happen.

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