While I was busy finishing my thesis, a whole lot of other stuff got pushed into the “I’ll do it later” pile. Now, my thesis has been successfully defended (and if any of you have a hankering to read An Ethnographic Study of Language Use in a Multilingual Education Program in Thailand let me know. I’ll e-mail you a copy. It has pie charts.)

I feel like I’ve been following a snowplow home during a blizzard (just throwing in a timely reference for all my North American friends. You’re welcome.) The road was clear all the way home, but now everything that had been pushed out of the way is piled up and blocking my driveway. And I can’t get home until it’s been cleared.

My plan is to move back to Canada. But unless you’ve never met me, and have just stumbled upon this blog by accident, you already know that my According-To-Plan track record is truly abysmal.

Honestly. It’s really, really bad. I’m never quite sure where I’m going to end up, or what I’ll be doing when I get there.

Spring will come, whether I’m ready for it or not.

That makes it tricky to sort out Big Things (and yes, in my head the words Big Things are big, bold, and capitalized…but in a much snazzier font).  So many things need to be sorted – like housing, and pet care, and furniture, and um…employment. Yup, I nearly forgot about employment. Planning is obviously not my strongest asset. (Unless you’re reading this as a potential employer. In which case, I’m awesome at planning. Really.)

Every single time I think about leaving Thailand, this pops into my head, dramatic music and all:

I don’t want to go.

Maybe that’s why instead of approaching the giant pile of Big Things with a sturdy shovel and a logical plan, I seem to have developed a different technique. I’ve hunkered down in the snow (picture The Little Match Girl, but hopefully without the dying bit at the end), and spend my time imagining what life might be like on the other side of the snowbank.

And I have a very detailed imagination.

Seriously – I spent two hours this afternoon browsing through a Lee Valley Tools hardware catalogue…

… looking for fancy brass escutcheons, knobs and drawer pulls…

…to decorate furniture I don’t own, in an apartment I haven’t found yet, somewhere in a city I might possibly move to.

I may have taken myself a little to seriously when I told me to buckle down and start focusing on the details. (In my defense, the Victorian reproduction drawer pulls on pages 78-79 were all kinds of gorgeous.)

Maybe I’m burying my head in a hardware catalogue to avoid all the sad, difficult stuff and Big Things that come with moving. I prefer to think that I’m growing more comfortable in the knowledge that my life is full of surprises and I trust that it’ll all work out.

So there you have it.

I don’t know where I’ll be living or what I’ll be doing by the time the snow melts, but I will have some fancy drawers.

What’s your favourite way to cope with Big Things?