I was wondering when it might sink in...

I am finally starting to feel like my LOA is creeping up on me. For months people have been annoyingly asking me, "isn't it coming up?" "you all ready for it?" "you must not be thinking about work anymore" and the like - but that's only because I told everyone about this 6 months ago, and not everyone (gasp) plans as far ahead as I do.

My official LOA starts on Thursday 25th September, but my last day at my client is Friday 19th September. That's only 6 weeks away, but it seems much closer. The go live date for the project I'm managing is 29th August, so there is plenty to be done up until then. Following that date, there are 4 months of successive application deployments. My replacement (to be determined) is due to start 8th Sept, giving 2 weeks of transition time which actually works out quite well with the timing of the project. So, as long as we get someone in at the right time, work isn't my main stress....

I am, however, starting to get a bit stressed about all the personal errands/admin to be done. This is evidenced by the fact that I snapped at Maneesh this week about how I just couldn't plan a trip for us on such short notice (3 weeks). I thought afterwards... me? not plan a trip? What's wrong? That's when I realised that I really do have a lot of things spinning around in my head at the moment, so I spent the hour train ride this morning further documenting my to-do list, including completion dates. Now I just have to start actioning on them.....it's not as bad as I'm making it out to be, but several of the activities can't be done until Sept/Oct anyway, so there's not *too* much to do about them now.

I just feel a bit unsettled, unprepared for the unknown, and all the expected emotions that moving out of your flat/job/country for a year would engender. I went through this two years ago when I moved out here, but since this move isn't permanent, I am handling it much better this time around.

Sometimes I wonder why I'm doing this. It would be so much easier to just sit at my desk, continuing to earn (quite good) money and live my sufficiently fulfilling life in London. But I think I'm just afraid of what might happen next year (in a good way) and looking for "reasons to stay". The only ones I can think of are much too short-term emotional or long-term logical to entertain. I know this is the right decision for me, and I am going to stick to it, trusting that it will be one of the best things I have ever done.