Into the Void

 I know I said in the first post that this post would be about the trip and how we got to the point where we were about to relocate to Edmonton as a step toward semi-early and affordable retirement, but I'm having a panic attack right now and I need to explore this because it's emotionally raw and interfering with my day. The thought, "I'm going to Edmonton to die" just hit me.  Like a freight train.   So much that I could, if it didn't shut things down and compartmentalize right now (because I'm at work), have a fantastically snotty and possible much overdue cry.   And don't get me wrong, I'm not actually afraid of death. It's the suffering, the lingering, the slow sliding over the abyss, that scares the crap out of me but that's not it, or not really it. I'm having to purge stuff.  Long held belongings and items that I've hung onto for decades because we don't have the room for it in the new place and it's best to get rid ...

 I've wanted to start detailing this for a long while now but finding the right outlet has been the trick and now, I've already amassed so much, bottled up so much, that I'm at that frightening point of wondering if it's too late to start and where to begin. So let's start at the beginning... At the very end of 2021, while sitting with my wife in a very nice historic resort property near the heart of Paris (yes, that Paris, the France one, not the Ontario one), a sense of dread came over me.  Neither one of us were in a bad place, work, home or otherwise in our lives, we frequently comment on just how blessed we are, but the longer the pandemic dragged on the more it felt like we were just treading water, on all fronts, not just because of pandemic restrictions for indeed very few of those were limitations if you were willing to leap the hurdles, and in fact the pandemic was more a gift to us, reminding us that time was the fire in which we burned and forcing us to ...