This blog title was inspired by a line in a Tragically Hip song – No dress rehearsal, this is our life. When we decided to pick our lives up and move across the world, I’m sure many of our family and friends thought we were crazy. Why would we possibly leave solid jobs, a home we’d poured our hearts and souls into renovating and making our own, and of course, family and friends we were both solidly connected to? We asked ourselves those same questions, but in the end, it always came back to, why wouldn’t we? So that’s where the song comes in. There is no dress rehearsal in life and we only get to live it once, so we decided to set the doubts and fears aside and embrace this opportunity as an adventure of a lifetime.
So why Australia? Why now? The timing and opportunity were both finally right for us. We’d talked about a move like this many years ago, but the job wasn’t quite the right fit, we had a pup we couldn’t imagine putting into quarantine, and we just weren’t yet at the place where we could fully grasp the idea of moving our lives halfway around the world.
Was it an easy decision this time around? Yes and no. The idea was exciting and certainly fit our love of travel and adventure, but it was all a little overwhelming to consider at first too. Where do you even start in planning a move like this? Lucky for us (insert sarcasm here), it took approximately 8 months to complete the visa process so we had lots of time to process, plan, organize and mentally adjust. While the goodbyes were hard, we both felt completely ready for this move by the time it happened and so far we haven’t looked back.