The beyond
Do you remember your senior year in high school or college? How you were so ready to start your new life? How you felt on top of the world as a senior, but also ready to make the jump into the unknown world beyond? Well, that’s what it’s beginning to feel like this year here in Colorado. We are nearing our one year countdown and the weather today is cold, rainy and cloudy.
While I can get carried away in the feelings of autumn: cooking chili, drinking hot tea (instead of cold tea), changing the sheets to flannel and lighting up the fireplace once more, I am also getting those senioritis pulls of wanting to just GO!
We are pretty much ready to move to Puerto Rico. Like completing most -but not quite all- of your credits in school, we have enough money saved up to move, but we are just saving up a bit more each month to pay for various projects (like our deck) and hopefully get a little more in rental income. All these extra and elective “credits” will better prepare us for the world that’s to come. But it’s still so hard to keep making the trek to “school” every day. What’s the point in getting invested in the outcome of something you won’t be around for in years to come?
In addition to senioritis, this “senior year” also makes for some interesting conversations in our house. For example:
“Should we start thinking about getting a new car? The Honda has almost 300,000 miles…Oh wait, Puerto Rico…On second thought, I think we can make it one more year.”
“What if Schnoodle lives another year? What are we going to do with her when we move?”
“I don’t want to get any socks ( or coats, or sweaters, or blankets) because I won’t need any in the tropics.”
“Should we take SCUBA lessons now so that we are ready when we get there?”
“How much do you know about boats?”
“I wonder if I should get my commercial pilot’s license or just a check-in with a flight instructor…I should talk with them about flying over water!”
“We should probably get together with _____, because we may never see him or her again after we move.”
For every item in the house: “Do you think we should sell our _____, give it away, bring it, or leave it as part of the rental of the house?”
“How much do you think we can rent out our house for?”
“Are we missing anything on our Colorado Bucket list?”
Et cetera, et cetera.
It’s kind of a strange feeling knowing you are going to leave. A little unsettling. A little exciting. A little “devil-may-care” attitude. In a way it sort of reminds me of talking with my dad when he knew he was going to die. Of course, we don’t know -at all!- what he was going through…but certainly he was preparing to leave the known and that made sweating all the other small stuff seem silly. And that is about as close a comparison as I can come. We are preparing to leave the known, the routine, the comfortable in exchange for an adventure in the beyond!
And like preparing to leave this world, as you can tell by our conversations, we have begun to think of all the other electives we want or need to do here before we leave. To get our affairs in order, so to speak. I remember the seniors when I was just a freshman in high school who had a “will” written up and they bequeathed their witty, ironic knowledge and funny items to the lower classmen. And in a similar way I have been thinking about all that I want to “will” to my friends and family. It’s going to be hard to leave this all, and yet, I am so excited about what’s to come!
This senior year will be fun in its own way as well. For you never really see your world until you are just about to leave it. And you never forget your senior year, senioritis and all.