Yellow Brick Road. Part 1.

The time has come to start recording the story of how The von Reekie’s took New York. I know that one is not supposed to count one’s chickens before they hatch but there is nothing wrong with a bit of positive forecasting. If I talk about it enough, I can will it into existence. I am writing the story as I live it into words.
Most of my life I have been an aimless drifter. I drifted not through towns and cities, but through days and weeks and years. I didn’t know what my aim was, other than to live a good life with my family and friends. Aimless drifters are negatively stereotyped, but they can hold jobs. Raise children. The only thing missing is a plan.
For most of my life, I haven’t even needed a plan, wonderful things have happened to me by sheer luck. Starting with the happy fate of being born into a beautiful family in Australia with loving parents who wanted only the best for me. That alone was enough to set me up for life. I am eternally grateful to be in the middle of a sister sandwich. Happily wedged between my Taurean siblings who form an integral part of my social circle well into adult life. They are friends I would have chosen regardless of sharing DNA.
Kismet struck again when I found the love of my life.  I was lucky enough to meet the human with whom I share my daily life at the age of seventeen. Right place, right time – another blessing for which I will be eternally grateful. My relationship with Mattie was forecast by a clairvoyant…but she called him Bob. She told me that my Bob and I would have a happy life together. Everyone wants love in their life, but it doesn’t always work out how they hoped. I have beautiful, talented and amazing friends who would be so wonderful and loving in a relationship, but the right one hasn’t come their way yet. So again, I cannot credit any of my good fortune to anything more than blessed luck.
The path that Mattie and I have taken together through life has been full of happenstance. Things just happened. Two amazing kids popping up in the cabbage patch, jobs we fell into. Matt was in the business of printing magazines before he wrote for them, I got into editing because the first proper job I landed after university was as a receptionist at a post production facility. Of course we had to work hard once we got there and we always had the drive to be in a creative field, I’m simply trying to convey how random it all was. I never had a 5 year plan or even a two week one.
Which is why I’m frankly a little surprised that I suddenly have a dream to achieve.
The grand plan of moving to New York evolved slowly. Beginning as a little whisper in my subconscious (crooning softly like Frank Sinatra) until it became an insistent voice broadcasting across my inner monologue “Go There Now”. I have never known such laser focus – I’ve become one of those boring obsessive types. Drifters are a little lackadaisical. But when you have a plan, you make things happen. We are building a bridge from Sydney to New York, like beavers building a dam. Every step of the process seems inconsequential, dragging another twig with our teeth, but we will get there.
On my quest to find information about visas and housing, jobs and credit ratings, social security numbers and health insurance, I have come across many personal blogs and gratefully devoured the trail of information scraps. Now it is our turn to do a little Hansel & Greteling, to leave behind some tasty breadcrumbs, which may one day help someone else find their way to the greatest city on earth.
Step one is to believe. If I do nothing else in this life, I will go with my family and live in New York.