Here goes.

Hello there.

Well, in exactly 10 weeks and 2 days I will be moving from my home town of Sale, South Manchester to Boston. Yikes, crikey and errr, holy crap. It's a big move. I'm both excited and terrified; heartbroken at the thought of all I'm leaving behind and thrilled at the prospect of all I could be gaining.

So how did it come to this? I'm 32 this year, I've had some experience of moving about the world a bit. I'm not as well-travelled as some but I'm not averse to a change of scenery either, and there have been a few places I've called home over the years. Somehow though, through a series of missteps both romantic and financial, I ended up back exactly where I started, back living with my mum in the the very house I grew up in. And it's been fine, it's been good. I have a career I enjoy, family and friends I adore and a dog who is the one true love of my life. I'm busy, I do things I enjoy, I spend time with the people who matter and, for the most part, I quite like my life.

There's a but of course. The but is this - but I've got stuck. But I'm not moving forward. But I've got comfortable with mum and the dog and the watching of Coronation Street in my pyjamas. I've been happy to go to friend's for dinner and to drink the same wine in the same pubs, to walk the dog in the same park and to go to bed with a good book rather than a hot man. Whilst professionally I do what I love and have been given some wonderful opportunities, outside of work I'm not doing anything that scares, challenges or excites me.

Back in March I was doing my usual flick through the international jobs section of a well-known website, something I would do every once in a while solely for daydreaming purposes, when I saw the Boston job advertised and wondered what would happen if I sent an application. I didn't expect to hear back, much less be offered the job, and at first I wasn't sure what I'd do even if I was offered it. The more I thought about it though, the more I realised that this could be the new challenge I needed, something that would take me out of my comfort zone both personally and professionally.

I've decided to write about it here. Not so much the work stuff, I find it's best to keep that offline as much as possible, but more just to record the excitement and nerves in the build up to the big move, as well as the process of settling into my new home city. Hopefully I'll be able to look back on my ramblings from some future vantage point and remember how it felt to be making this change. And of course as the future me watches the waves from the porch of my Cape Cod summer house, or as my handsome, Matt Damon lookalike, Harvard Professor husband polishes the wood floors in our Boston townhouse, I'll be able to remind myself how worth it it all was.