A lot has changed, dear Reader. For one, I live in Oregon now. I finally launched my Etsy shop (psst: https://www.etsy.com/shop/TinyWitchStudios). And I left corporate retail (in December 2022) to finally start working in the field that I have my education in (in June 2023). I’m living with that wonder girlfriend of my that I mentioned in my last post. Yes, Reader, I was able to drag a New Englander out west. I was impressed by that one as well.
I do wish, however, that I had documented the move from Arizona to Oregon as well as I documented the move from West Virginia to Arizona. But I know the stress of it all prevented me from doing a lot of things. We mostly wanted to relax. My girlfriend had just driven from Connecticut to Arizona (a trip that should have taken her 4-5 days) in a little over 48 hours. I was stressed because all my stuff could not fit in the U-Haul box and I had to leave some things to a storage unit in Arizona. And while I did not have a cat carrier on my lap for the long, multi-day drive to Oregon, I had a box instead and I was equally frustrated and sore
We did leave Arizona later than we wanted on that Friday (that seems to be a trend with me moving to another state, huh), but we finally made it to our first destination in SoCal around midnight-ish. We spent the weekend with our friends and relaxed for the first time in like a week. Monday morning, we piled back into the car and made our way up north. We stopped briefly just outside of SoCal to visit a friend and then headed up to the Bay Area, which was our next destination. We made, had dinner with the friends we were staying with, and quickly passed out from exhaustion. The next morning we left quickly because we were trying to get ahead of storms. This was our last day on the road as we planned on not stopping until we reached our new location. Driving from NorCal to northwestern Oregon is beautiful. As someone who has lived in Arizona for almost five years at that point, it was great to see the color green again. As I saw snow on the ground for the first time since living back east. I was actually happy to see it.
We arrived around 7pm and got to the hotel (because nobody wants to move into a new apartment after driving for 10 hours). Even though we were in a hotel, it felt good to be home. We ordered take out and got a drink from the hotel bar to celebrate our new adventure.
That was a little over three months ago, Reader. Living with the person I love has been far better for my mental health. When I’m having a hard day (which has been frequently) it’s nice to have someone be there to pull me into a hug and tell me that everything is going to be alright. Money is very tight right now because I hadn’t been working since I left corporate retail. Though, I started a new job last week and start a second job next week. With the extra money around (after catching up with bills first, of course), we will be able to explore more our new state and the PNW in general.