Success?

Frugality: destroyed! I'm about to do something that kills it, because plane trips are not frugal. But I'll do it as frugally as I can...

About 20 applications in, I got 4 interviews and 3 of them wanted me. Gobsmacked. I got to choose where I work. Amaze. Perk: free meals from my work (frugal!) Perk: paying better than minimum wage. Perk: free uniform (frugal!). Perk: great bus services in the place I'll be living and working (frugal!). Perk: excellent leave policies mean I'll be able to visit Finland pretty regularly to see everyone.

I have booked my flight back over to England (the third time in a month - this time a one-way ticket). I've started applying for apartments. Tiny apartments (frugal!). Two showings later this week (please cross your fingers the landlords like me).

I start work in a week. Petrified, of course, but also excited to sort of build an Elisa life from scratch, something I've felt like I've been missing for, I don't know, 21 years. That, for anyone wondering, was the reason I sort of went on this odyssey, I have felt increasingly stifled and wanted to "be" something, which I'm sure sounds really pretentious to those who'd have liked the luxury of barely working for the past ten years. For years I've struggled with not having any goals or feeling like I could ever achieve anything other than treading water - incredibly depressing - but about a year ago I figured out what it is I want, and it's to forge my own life, to have an identity. Totally taboo subject to admit that you feel like you've lost yourself when you become a parent, and if I'm honest, I also sort of lost more of myself when I came to Finland, even though it's a beautiful country. I don't belong here. I'm not going to belong here.

It's like a holiday that never ends. People love holidays but anyone will tell you it's miserable to live out of a suitcase. Finland has been a long, extended holiday for me. The gloss of it faded in the second year. The misery began in the third. Then came the boredom, then the frustration, then a small wave as I started doing tourist lets, bought a lovely investment apartment, and then - and then - it still wasn't enough. So here we are.

Visiting England confirmed what I felt. How ridiculous to find a supermarket soothing, but it was. I could find the food I wanted. I didn't need to embarrass myself with a shopkeeper or go home with the wrong product or with none at all. I could comprehend every packet. Understand shopkeepers. Read street signs. Speak to bus drivers. Go where I wanted, be out as late as I wanted, hog the shower, live on crackers and fruit all day, not cook dinner. How pathetically juvenile to revel in being a grownup and making my own decisions all by my big self. But it was too huge to ignore and affirmed that it's what I absolutely, positively need to do.

It has been too long and it's too overdue; I'm already furious at myself for not having had the courage to do this a year ago. I'm frustrated that I couldn't do this in Finland; it would have been a lot cheaper and far, far nicer not to have to be apart from my husband for several weeks at a time.

But it is what it is and I'm going to make what I can of it, starting now.