Spain!...by way of Maine?

I gave notice today. Three months notice, to be exact.

First of all, though I love Detroit and will always harbor naughty personal fantasies about our time together, it's time for us to leave. My mother is sick (though she's currently better) and begging me to come back to the North East. More than that, however, we're just tired of the D. I consider it a sure sign that I must leave if I'm able to walk into a new place and see someone I know. Detroit has suddenly become small and I am finally feeling culturally malnourished (meaning art, literature, film, etc.) from a four year intellectual diet of terrible radio, tired local music, a handful of galleries, no stimulating nightlife and a dire general brain-drain. That will be the extent of my Detroit-bashing because, as I said, I love Detroit. Detroit has been good to us. Detroit has taken care of us. Detroit has made us grow. Detroit has opened our eyes to experiences that simply could not happen elsewhere. And Detroit is a magnificent city full of people who are wonderful and friendly and who collectively wish and hope and work for its inevitable renaissance.

So, we decided to move back up North. But what about Spain?! one might ask. Good question.

We haven't really saved a dime for the move. Well, we haven't saved as we had planned. We haven't implemented the changes necessary to increase our ability to save nor have we shown discipline in the saving we are already capable of doing. We also haven't renewed our passports or started going through our things to determine what to sell.

Several things conspire to make us, thus far, failures at international moving. 1. My job. I work 60-70 hours per week which leaves little enough time for sleeping let alone time enough to do all of the preparation. 2. I'm going it alone. Though my husband insists that he wants to travel the world, he is by no means a motivated individual. Any preparation or planning or work toward the move is mine. 3. We rent and we just recently had to pay for a mechanical malfunction on top of our monthly rent. The story is complicated and will only make me have an anuerysm. 4. We eat out all the time. This is largely related to 1, as I don't typically get home until 8 or 9 after having worked a 12 or 15 hour day without eating. Pizza is incredibly tempting and the thought of cooking and washing dishes fills my heart with dread.

There are other things but those are the big ones. At some point we decided that, if we could just pay cash for our housing and be free from monthly bills like electricity and water, we could then save all of our money (or at least the vast majority of it) toward Spain.

Obviously, we're confused and trying to reconcile our desire to own something significant (that seems to come with being 30) with our desire to be free to travel the globe and experience new things.

To be honest, at this writing, I'm feeling less and less confident that I will ever have any life that I've imagined for myself.