step one
Quit your job.
Wake up to yet another dark & bitter January day that stretches ahead of you like all the rest. Sit up and touch your bare feet to the chilly floor and suddenly think, you know, you can quit if you want to.
Actually, as a thrill goes through your entire body, you think, you can take the summer off if you want to!
That's it. You know. Even as the brain-y part of you starts calculating costs vs savings, the heart part of you has already decided and is joyfully soaring forward envisioning sun & sand & salt.
There is not a single moment of doubt.
During your January performance review, when you let your boss know you're resigning, you both cry. Okay, you cry and her eyes glisten. Because the pair of you came through the fire together, and it's been two years of hard work, and you're proud of what has been accomplished. You give three month's notice.
Who gives THREE MONTHS' NOTICE??
You do.
step two
Give notice on your rental.
Spend the next three months avoiding packing so you can do it all in the last three days. If you're keeping track, the first two steps to having a fantastic summer mean that, abracadabra, you turn into a gypsy.
Gypsy. Nomad. Free spirit.
Wanderer.
This is the place you've stayed (and the job you've held) the longest since you graduated. Feel relieved, wanderer. You've stayed still too long.
step three
Pack all of your earthly belongings into the closet under the stairs in your boyfriend's basement.
Okay, all your things except the furniture in a storage unit you haven't used in four years, and the boxes of school papers stacked in your mom's laundry room you haven't looked at in eight. And your clothes. All your clothes go with you.
Your dog, a beautiful & sensitive & ridiculous german shepherd, stays with your boyfriend. You cry A. Lot. about this.
step four
Book a one way ticket to the beach.
Any beach would do. But you're headed to red sands. Prince Edward Island.
Before the summer is out, you'll also search for fossils on windy beaches in Cape Breton, and you'll spend whirlwind weekends with old friends in Freddy Beach.
step five
Start a blog.
'Cause you need a project, and everyday life has almost made you forget the pleasure of writing.
congratulations
Congrats are due upon completion of this checklist. You're well on your way to a summer where you have no idea what's going to happen!
But, whatever happens, you are oh, so, glad, to, be, alive in this world.
This world is very lovely.
Being alive is lovely.
Whatever happens, you won't forget.
xoxo...
rachel
