I said “goodbye” to my friends today… it wasn’t easy, I hope they didn’t notice how hard it was. A rough start to the day, I was up at dawn to do a sunrise family session in Claremont. Sometimes it feels nice to have so many people clamoring for spots on my quickly dwindling calendar, but sometimes it’s hard to know that each one of these families will most likely move on from me and have another photographer take their photos next year. It’s hard to say goodbye to my clients as well…

Then we came back to our neighborhood and had one last breakfast at Eclipse Chocolate with Will. I want to say that it was an amazing meal and I savored every bite but it’s hard to have a last meal… it’s almost bitter knowing that it’s the last one for a while, what’s the point? That return meal will be 10000 times more delicious than the one from this morning, why did we even bother? Well… I guess if I didn’t have it then I wouldn’t know what I needed to return to. And it was nice to sit and say farewell…

Then we came home and we packed some more… and waited for our little goodbye shindig to start. I felt anxious as the time approached both because I wanted to see everyone and also because I wanted to pull it off like a band aid a little… I mean, it was like 15 minutes in before I started to make secondary and tertiary plans to see people again in the coming weeks. I love my friends… This is why I have so many friends all over, because I’m just never very good at disconnecting or allowing my friendships to fade. They are my extended family. But most of the time, they go… not me. I stay here.

So, I look around my little get together and I see all these people that have blown into my life on the sweet California winds and I find myself seeing the origin of each relationship… this one was a client, this one is my childhood friend, this one and I have some stories (Oh my goodness), this one is my flesh and blood… it’s hard to know that they will be here, living and loving this place without me. My sweet home San Diego.

But… I’m going to go to Copenhagen and I’m going to find a different life there. Probably not a different “me” but definitely a different way of living and a different way of being. I’m going to experience their culture and their language, and I’m going to join in and hope I get accepted into the club. It’s going to be colder, a ridiculous amount of expensive, and probably not as diverse as this place I’ve grown up and have learned to love… but it’ll be different and I think it’ll bring me to the path I’ve been trying to get on my whole life. And, if it doesn’t, then I’ll just be me and try something else because, as most of the people at the party know about me already, I never give up.

This isn’t what I thought I would be doing at this point in my life, no way. I always assumed that Aaron would finish school and we would just struggle on from there… and now I’m taking this huge detour. The hardest part is going through everything and throwing it away… knowing it’s not reasonable to keep everything and making the conscience decision to throw it in the trash. The ticket stubs and the stuffed animals, the books and the hodge-pogey gifts… it’s just stuff and I’ll feel better later but, for now, I just want to go to Target and buy 100000 bins and throw nothing away……. I even want to keep the dust. The sentimentality I never really had has grown into this thing I just can’t control, kinda overnight.

So… I have a blog and I have this Facebook thing that I’ve been trying to use again (I hate Facebook) and I will post to them and I will sit here and watch you all from the perfectly designed and a bit darker north. Give me good stuff to keep me occupied while I struggle to create a new community in Denmark. I’m not worried about making new friends or keeping in touch with the old, I guess I just know how long it took me to feel so perfectly at home in my hometown and I’m pretty sure the two years I have in Denmark isn’t going to get me there.

I will miss you <3