As evidenced by the very website you’re reading, we’re finally serious. All of the conversations that have come and gone over a few years, with one of us saying “Let’s just sell it all and go!” and eventually talking ourselves back from the brink – all of those conversations have finally come to a head.
And I think it may have started with the damn Snooze button.
Snooze is everywhere in my life. I use my BlackJack 2 as my alarm in the morning, and in order to use the (much-loved-by-me) Snooze functionality, you have to hit the clearly-labeled Snooze button. My bajillions of conference calls all pop a reminder in Outlook at work and at home – also with clearly-labeled Snooze functionality.
A few weeks ago, during my morning Snooze-fest, my tired eyes focused on the word “Snooze.” Something popped in my brain. Suddenly, the word “Snooze” was alien to me, and I was very much awake. I woke up Rhys and showed him my phone – he, of course, looked at me like I was crazy.
“What?” he wanted to know.
“Look at this! Has snooze always been spelled this way?”
His look intensified into ‘have-you-seriously-lost-your-mind?’ “Yes,” he answered slowly. “It has always been spelled that way.”
I shook my head. “No way,” I replied. “They changed something!”
“Whatever, sweetie,” and the roll over, and the snoring began again in earnest in a matter of seconds.
But Snooze remained alien. Every time the alarm went off, or an Outlook reminder popped, I felt a growing sense of unease. Something is NOT right!! Snooze? Snooze isn’t a properly spelled word!! I’ve always snoozed. But not spelled like that. And no, I don’t know how I would be comfortable seeing it spelled – just not “snooze.”
That weird little seedling of unease began to grow; the strange little circle of warped reality expanded to envelop other areas of life. So when I had a dream one night (not the metaphorical kind, but the kind that happens before or between snoozes) in which we did travel the world writing a book, and when I realized how incredibly disappointed I was to wake up to the life I was leading, I knew something had to change. The new twist? When I mentioned it to Rhys, there was no hesitation in his voice at all – “Sure,” he said. “Let’s do it.” I don’t know when that fulcrum tilted and he became perhaps even more adventurous than me, but he’s sounded more serene and sure than me. And I’m quite sure.
They DID change something.
Rhys' Pieces 