The Q3 Plan Is In Motion

The last full calendar year I plan to spend in the Southeast is halfway gone. Every day I spend in Atlanta now is one I know may be too late, but I need to stay another thirteen or fourteen months here to wrap up what has been the summer of my life. My friends and family are making plans to move to Vietnam, to Mexico, to Scotland, to California. Some have already gone and others will leave in the next year or so. I have to stay for four hundred more days for a hundred reasons. I worry about money and employment, and though I love my current job there is no certainty of continued employment anywhere.

The city sweats this year with too much rain, and like every year, it’s a little hotter than the one before. I bike between thirty and fifty miles per week on average now, though not this week as I twisted my ankle a bit taking a curb too fast and wiping out. When you bike just about everywhere you have to wipe out once a year or so to remember to keep your mind on the road.

Our oldest had a very successful first year away from us up near the Canadian border and came home for the summer to work only to find there are no jobs in Atlanta this season for temporary workers as in the past. Our youngest is away from the family unit for the first time in an extended way, working at a summer camp in the mountains. The husband and I told them we would be divorcing in a year, dissolving the Atlanta household, and likely moving our separate ways. We will wait here in Atlanta for the youngest to finish High School, because we will always be their parents and we are devoted to setting them both up for success. The two kids understand as much as a nineteen- and seventeen-year-old can.

The marriage died not because of cheating, nor the financial pressures of living through the Second Great Depression, nor because of the upheaval of the pandemic. It died because we just grew into different people. The husband and I had fifteen great years together, and five bad ones. The couple of years on either side of that twenty were just us figuring out how to get together and us figuring out how to leave. When we split in a year there will be no joint property, no child support to be paid, and likely we’ll both leave Atlanta if we can at all.

I’m hopeful that I have solid work for the next twelve to fourteen months here. I hope we’re not waiting too late to leave. The second quarter of my life will close out here in Atlanta. Preparation for third quarter is in progress.