I’m writing this post from an apartment in Rome…and I think that sentence is pretty indicative of just how much my life has changed in the last few months.

A little over three weeks ago I worked my last shift for the Royal District Nursing Service. Appropriately, my last patient was a call-out for wound care, and it felt strange yet oddly satisfying to finish the dressing, pack away my equipment, and farewell the patient knowing, for a short while at least, I wouldn’t be doing that sort of work anymore. That from that point on, my time was my own.

I haven’t been unemployed since, at fifteen, I begun work at a supermarket called Bi-Lo. The fact that that supermarket no longer exists is a sign that a break was overdue.

So yesterday (or perhaps it was the day before – I crossed a timeline and got all messed up), I packed the essentials for living into a bag – for those of you playing at home, the essentials for living weighed fourteen kilograms – and left Australia for foreign shores. To live. For a while, at least.

I figured the change in life warranted a change in the layout of the website, hence the modern new look you’re presently enjoying.

Be prepared for a barrage of travel posts…