"What if it doesn't work out?"

The most asked question as we prep to move to Scotland is the one that will keep you from pursuing your most desired life. Plus- this just in- scroll down to learn the decision from the UK on my visa!

Autumn is coming slowly to the Blue Ridge Mountains. Each day as Andrew and I head down to the creek with the dogs, we assess the state of the leaves. Still mostly green we report to each other, sighing with profound relief.

We’re in the final phase of prepping for our move to Scotland…. which also means leaving our stunning—but high maintenance— property in the woods near Asheville, North Carolina and adapting to urban living in Edinburgh. Right now, as we cruise through our final days in these mountains, there’s little mental space for the pond pumps getting choked with fallen leaves or leaf blowing autumn’s abundance from the gutters that line the driveway— the ones that keep rainfall from creating sideways rivulets that carve canyons in the gravel…

…So we’re hoping to be on our way before the leaves let go. And we know from years of experience that fall, with all its attendant work, arrives here at speed. It’s like an avocado ripening suddenly and all at once.

Which pretty much sums up our lives these past six weeks. After months of organizing the component parts of our Scottish move, the dominos are now tumbling in quick succession and we’re scrambling to keep up. The movers have already come and packed our stuff for the trip across the sea. Despite my careful lists, I’m fairly certain I over did it. The quote we were given for the move was so absurdly low that it seemed to make sense to pack even small things that could be easily replaced. So I organized paperclips and post-its into boxes, decided to grab not only the decent bath towels but also the back-up bath towels. Why not? I reasoned. We’d have to rebuy anything I didn’t bring.

Why not is because, despite our initial quote, it’s actually quite expensive to ship from the US to the UK. And the price is not just based on weight, like I had thought, but also on volume. So my $25 T.J.Maxx drinking glasses got packed with plenty of paper padding and divided over two boxes. I suspect I’ll be paying over $100 to get them to Edinburgh. (There are so many emojis that need to be inserted here.)

Luckily, we only plan to do this once…. Although, in all fairness, every move is the “last move” and every house the “last house.”

Because after a while in once place, I feel like I’ve done the thing I set out to do there. Here in Asheville, we opened a second Herbiary; I wrote seven books. Am I done with herbalism as a career? Am I through writing books? I don’t know. But I’m excited to open the door and invite in my next incarnation. I’ve always felt like a new city is a blank canvas for personal rediscovery which, for my Gemini soul, is what keeps life juicy.

As my time in Asheville begins to wind down, days have become ridiculously busy. Even people I haven’t seen for most of the year want a farewell tea or lunch date. The conversations have begun to find a predictable pattern: first they oooo and ahhhh over the move— they love Edinburgh or they’ve always wanted to visit. But as we settle in for a chat, they come around to asking deeper questions: what if it doesn’t work out? What’s the back-up plan? Behind these questions is their fear of the unknown, not only for me but for themselves. As they hear about my preparations and look at photos of our new flat, they wonder if they could pull off a move like this.

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BTW this is my second move of this sort. I wrote about the first one in Letting Magic In. If you’ve always wondered if you could be brave enough to let go of everything in order to pursue the life you most want, this book makes for a cozy fall read.

(Don’t wait for this one to come out in paperback—it’s not gonna happen! This particular publisher only does hardcover.)

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A few days back, driving home from one of these teas with a friend, I listened to an NPR interview about the state of the space race. Back in the early ‘oughts I had a friend who was fascinated with the X Prize, closely following each of the teams who were competing for the ten million dollars offered to whichever private group was able to send a manned flight into space. I can still picture my friend’s face brightening as he talked of rockets and fuselages, but I never caught the bug.

Yet, as I drove, I listened in fascination to Ariel Ekblaw, founder of the Aurelia Institute, talking about how the low gravity atmosphere of space makes for a perfect medical laboratory. As she enthused about advances that could only happen in space, she predicted that today’s youth would have jobs in which they commuted to various satellite stations, not for a 9-5 but for three to six month stints out in the stratosphere.

Something about her enthusiasm, the way she saw developing space as a benefit for those on earth—not just a testosterone laden marathon— intrigued me. In an absolutely surprising twist, the notion of space expansion began to tug at my imagination. In an idle way, I considered sending Ariel a note to see if she needed a staff writer. What would that be like? I wondered, part of my brain already mapping a new life’s path.

Simultaneously, another part of my mind was chewing on the ways the race-to-space could go cosmically wrong; the damage we humans could do as we expanded into these starlit frontiers. History shows how civilizations are, more often than not, careless as they stretch and grow.

As these myriad thoughts happily banged about in my brain, I realized that this is what stops most people from following their dreams. It’s easier to listen to the voice that says this might be a really bad idea. Whether it’s doing something simple— like dropping a note to the founder of a fascinating organization— or doing something kind of crazy like selling a home and business and moving to Edinburgh, it seems safer to listen to the voice that says it might not work out. It could all go dreadfully wrong.

And it might.

But what if that’s okay?

More and more, we want life to be predictable. We schedule calls with friends instead of letting them happen spontaneously. We read seven reviews before we go see a movie or try a new restaurant. We want to know what we’re getting before we get it.

But we never know, do we? Last year at this time, Hurricane Helene upended my world. I had just come back from leading two back to back writing retreats. I was so jazzed at where my life appeared to be headed… then everything changed. I look at my friends and, while their situations are different in the details, they are the same in illustrating life’s unpredictability: one’s husband of over twenty years announced out of the blue that he wanted a divorce; another’s mother suddenly died after moving closer so they could spend more time together; yet another’s husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

We don’t get to do life only when conditions are known and favorable. There are always variables, and we only know in retrospect if a decision we made was the right one for the long term.

And “right” is relative. Much of how something works out reflects not just circumstances but attitude. How we chose to interpret the events of our lives is a tremendous portion of whether we will later label a decision as “right.”

Lately Andrew and I have been experimenting with purposefully letting life be unknown. What if the movie (or the dinner or the party) isn’t all that good? Can we enjoy a conversation over a mediocre dinner? Go to the cinema for the experience, knowing that even a less-than-stellar movie gives us something fresh to think about?

What if we stop trying to control our experiences before we have them? What if we say yes to big, crazy life changes even if they will (likely) not be perfect?

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If all goes well, in about ten days we’ll leave together for Scotland.

But there’s another scenario in which I don’t get my visa in time and Andrew needs to go ahead without me (booking the dogs’ flight is complicated and now that it’s done, we won’t be making changes). We’re crossing our fingers for scenario number one but we’re discussing scenario number two, the less perfect version…

…And I’m already finding ways to frame it so, if this is the way it goes down, I can make it feel “right” and “good.” Why set yourself up for failure when you can use the same energy to set yourself up for success?

(Next, I need to find a way to frame-up a sudden onset of autumn, complete with gutter clogging leaf fall!)

Whichever way this all works out, I suspect I’m over and out for a few weeks.

I can’t wait to send you a note once I get myself (imperfectly) situated in Edinburgh!

UPDATE: As I was doing the final proofread on this post, an email pinged through: Your application for a United Kingdom (UK) visa has been successful.

Andrew was in the shower. We high-fived over the shower door. Another domino down, and an electric current of excitement running through my body. This is the first time I’ve let myself feel it, this move, and I am effervescent.

If the leaves will stay on the trees for another ten days, we are golden!