It’s becoming obvious that, once we leave the place we live in now, there will always be glitter somewhere in this apartment, and the only way to remove all of it, to the last molecule, would be through a deep, cleansing fire that razes the building down to below its foundations. I just bought my first few tiny bags of sequins, and I also just found the first rogue sequin in the apartment, six feet from where I keep them, without any of the bags having been open. It reminds me of an experiment I heard a woman do on the radio. She was so sick of her bedbugs, and found them so devilishly difficult to eradicate, that she managed to grab a single bedbug, put it in a jar, and seal the jar, just to see how long it took to die. It didn’t die. It turned into more bedbugs. Glitter is like that. (And sequins too, I suppose.) It’s called “craft herpes” for a reason.

When the husband and I woke up this morning, it pleased us to spend some time looking for places to live. I suggested a few other states we might move to, other than Washington, and we looked around in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. They all have inexpensive places to live too, but I take it for granted it’s because they’re all built by moose atop permafrost, and have no reliable water supply. (Think Flint, Michigan.) And apparently, while they’re all close to Canada--which I learned today is a deal-breaker for Zach--none of them has what we want in terms of affordability, scenic grandeur, and, you know, weed.

So nothing has happened to shake our plan to move to Spokane early next year. The manner in which it’s filling my life with ambivalent terror continues unabated. When I tell people at work I’m going to move to Spokane, specifically to escape Texas, they ask, “Will you be able to keep your job and work from home?” In truth, my employer has suggested a time or two that the company may allow me to do that. I take at least some comfort from this. I’m not going to do it, though. Two reasons.

First, fuck those guys. It stopped being a fun company to work for a long time ago. Now they’re all just bean counters. Second, more specifically, fuck those guys right in the nostril. The whole point of this caper is to escape the life I’m dissolving into here in Austin. I haven’t the will to find a better job while I’ve got so much tenure with my current regrettable one, and I haven’t the will to find a place where it’s not so hot as long as I’m working this job. Again, the whole point of leaving Austin for a town we picked ourselves is to force myself to try to find a different job, which I don’t hate, in a place that I also do not hate.

It’s like in TV and movies where someone’s heart has stopped, or is beating incorrectly, so they get out the crash cart and yell, “Clear!” and *zzzzzap!* they put the paddles on the unfortunate patient and give them a large jolt of electricity, to regain a normal heart rhythm. That’s what I’m doing with my life here. It’s heart stopped, because of inertia and fear, and I’m going to give it a huge jolt, resetting EVERYTHING, and see if life on the far side of that experience isn’t more sustaining and less depressing.

When I list my fears, it’s a fun exercise in list-making, but really there’s just the one fear: We could fail. We could get there and, despite all our best efforts, all the desperate actions taken when unexpected, compulsory piles of money are required, we could fail. We could fail to find sufficient employment, or we do, but the jobs are terrible and we’re miserable for it, or all of that works out, but we have nazi neighbors who vandalize our apartment and our cars once they realize we don’t like football.

This is when Rational Rick steps in, and with his most calming tone, reminds me that all that shit could still, quite easily, happen here in fuck-you south Texas. We already have the unhappy jobs part covered. Also, we’ll have to make much less money to pay our rent there. That’s a positive. Also, the place we’ll be in is quite simply a jillion times better. We will be in the Inland Pacific Northwest (as opposed to the regular Pacific Northwest, with water on it, like Seattle). It’s prettier, it’s cooler, it snows more, and in the worst part of summer it’s a dry 85 degrees, with sweaters still necessary some mornings, cause it gets down into the 50s. Also, you know, weed.

And, I remind myself, consider this: Don’t people regularly wonder, what if, for some unanticipated reason, they suddenly found themselves deposited into a completely different life, surrounded by a completely different place and completely different people?

It would be terrifying, but...you could reinvent yourself, couldn’t you? You could present whomever you want to the new people as you meet them. You wouldn’t have to remember anything you’d ever done to make someone mad at you, because you’d only just arrived. Everyone will be judging you on your appearance, your behavior, and the shit you say to them, the way it always works with humans. You can completely omit telling them about how you’d remained cemented to a soul-crushing job for 22 years because it took that long to realize you were being underpaid and treated poorly by your employer. You could, instead, emphasize the part about how you recognized the quiet, toxic dangers of that comfortable life in Austin, and forced a drastic change upon yourself, to make sure you could say (and know) that you refused to accept slow death. You made sure your life was one worth living. I assume, when they hear that, they’ll start disrobing and offering me jobs and nice places to live. This is my hope.