SO, LONG DALLAS

Our cute townhouse!

After living in Dallas for two years and in Texas for nearly six—which blows my mind it’s been so long—it’s time to say goodbye. My boyfriend, John, and I are packing up our things, giving our dog a heavy dose of her car-anxiety medication, and taking a one-way road trip to Nashville in a couple weeks, and we are so ecstatic. Also, terrified. But mostly ecstatic.

John has worked as a mechanical engineer the last few years but last year decided to go back to school to get his graduate business degree from Vanderbilt. And me? Well, if you know me, you know Nashville is sort of my soul-city. I spent a summer there and fell madly in love with the people and the neighborhoods and the lifestyle. Oh, and skipping the whole long-distance thing to be together with my man and our dog all under one roof doesn’t hurt, either. Things have all somehow pieced themselves together, and before we knew it, we’re now two weeks from one long car ride with one big moving truck.

It’s been a trip getting to this point alone—John studying for his entrance exam last fall, applying to school, getting in, and together deciding, Yep, we are actually doing this; me frantically emailing every publication in Nashville seeing if they need writers or editors, having mini-meltdowns over where we’re going to live and how we are going to move two apartments into one; John attempting to calm me down; me calling him a hoarder (which may be a little aggressive, but the guy has STUFF) several too many times. Can you tell who the alarmist is in this relationship? This move is going to be swell, said the control-freak, clean-freak, plan-keeping-freak girlfriend. (By the way, I did end up getting a freelance gig copyediting and writing for the city’s magazine, so that helped things like my blood pressure.)

We’ve kept everything under wraps until now so both of us could respectfully tell our jobs we’re leaving, and the over-sharer part in me is so dang relieved to be getting it out there finally. Now, I can unabashedly ask anyone if they know someone who lives in Nashville, because I need friends and stuff—so, do you? (Seriously. No shame in my friend-hunting game.) I also like the feeling of having everything out in the open. No secrets, no dancing around topics at work. We’re leaving, and that’s that. Bye, Felicia.

While it’s refreshing and exhilarating to be so close to this major move, it’s also partially scary, a bit sad, and definitely intimidating. So, naturally, I had this idea that I want to document it, everything: I want to write down all the good, the bad, the exciting, and the annoying as two twenty-something kids who love each other uproot everything, make a trek a few states over, change careers, move in together, and make a home in Tennessee. It’s something I’ve tried to research, literally Googling “moving with boyfriend to new state where we know two people what to expect,” and as you might imagine, search results were not plentiful, certainly not helpful.

Why not blog about my own experiences, and get John in here from time to time for his counterpart male perspective? I mean, really, what could go wrong? As they say, moving is so fun! Except that no one says that. Stay tuned–and, Nashville, we’re comin’ for you!

Unit 5!