Three months into living here, I had a whole spreadsheet open with one-way flights back to Jacksonville. Not because anything had gone wrong, exactly. More that nothing had gone right enough yet, and I was tired of eating dinner standing up at my counter because I didn’t own a second chair.
I didn’t book the flight. I made tea instead, and then I made a list of the five things that had actually been good that week (a stranger walked me to a bus stop in the rain, my coworker left a plant on my desk, the sunset over the Sound did that thing it does). Small stuff. Not enough to build a whole move around, but enough to close the tab.
A year later I still don’t have a second chair. I have three now, actually, and people to sit in them. That’s the part nobody tells you: the turning point isn’t a moment, it’s a Tuesday you almost don’t notice.