28 March 2010

It’s early morning here in Sydney on Day 4.  The sky is tinged with pink and the temperature in a range that doesn’t require the fan to be blowing across the living room on its highest setting.  We are both up early to enjoy the cool morning and start to re-establish a bit of our prior morning routines.  Not the grumbling-gotta-go-to-work routines but the happier goal-setting ones that help to quiet our minds and that ultimately got us here today.

I’d say our biggest challenge over the past four days – outside of establishing internet and phone connections that won’t require second mortgages on assets back home – has been to not allow ourselves to become overwhelmed.  Establishing a life in a new county, even an English speaking one, entails so many details … anticipated and not.

We are both avid walkers and good with maps, but navigating daily on foot, in the heat, in search of the basics (and without an internet connection to help us find the nearest facilities) can start to take a toll, if you let it.

Thinking too far into the future about how to find a new place to live in a city full of neighborhoods you don’t know, how to furnish this new place without an active craigslist community nor a car to transport even the smallest of end tables, and wanting to make sure you’ve found just the right location with the right amenities that will inspire you to walk, run, bike out the door every day into the brilliant Sydney sunshine can start to take a toll too, if you let it.

Then there is the driving.  One of my favorite Seinfeld episodes was “Do The Opposite,” when George decided that every natural instinct he ever had was wrong but if he did the opposite, his life would change for the better.  From driving around the city with Cynthia – or, more accurately, from being driven around the city by Cynthia – we can see that every natural driving instinct we’ve ever had will have to be squelched and replaced with doing the opposite.  When you start to think about how this will all play out – us getting behind the wheel to navigate the unknown streets of Sydney, turning into outside lanes that will instinctively feel like we’re about to cause a head-on collision, or inside lanes that will scream at us wrong, wrong, wrong but will be right, right, right – that can also start to take a toll, if you let it.

So the key for us right now is to not let these overwhelming thoughts overwhelm us.  To not think too far into the future about how we will accomplish any of these things but to focus instead on each day and enjoy the experience – the fun and the stressful – for that is what this adventure, this choice that we made, is all about.  With the difficult comes good stories, with the easy comes a good time.  With all of it comes new experiences to enrich our daily lives.  And we know we’ll figure it out and land on our collective two feet – we always do.

29 March 2010

We’ve noticed that our website seems to have lost some functionality in transit across the Pacific.  We’ll get her right again as time goes on.  So please be patient with us if you come across some broken photo and video links – we’ll get them back up, time permitting.