What I mean when I say Alaska...

Lately, anytime anyone asks me what I'm planning to do when I graduate I tell them I'm going to move to Alaska and get a job and a dog.  It's my way of saying "I don't really know, but I'm sick of being asked and not having a good answer." So somehow, my brain translated that into "Oh, I'm moving to Alaska"

Now although I'm 100% serious about wanting to do this I acknowledge a few crucial things

• Yes, it is cold there- even colder to the native Texan blood that runs through me
• I know, it sounds absurd, but that's what I wanna do
• And by "do" I mean, if I don't get out of the immediate area as fast as possible there is a very good chance I will go crazy.  Not in some "medicate me until I see flying penguins" way, but in a "I will start to lose sight of my aspirations and settle" way, which I refuse to do
• I am in desperate need of a change, and if changing friends, geographic location, and lifestyles doesn't fulfill that change then maybe I'm already crazy.
• I don't care what job I get there, as long as I have enough money to pay my bills and save a little for trips back home.  
• I want need a Great Pyrenees dog in my life.  
• I know that I will miss my family.  My family is the most important thing in the world to me.  I am fiercely proud and protective of my siblings. I am always worried about my parents.  The thought of not being physically there for them makes me a bundle of nerves.
• It isn't going to be as easy or exciting as it is in my head.
• Wanderlust is a real struggle.  My desire to throw my schedule and planner out of the window is only strengthened by the fact that I have mandatory things I have to do.
• I don't care that it will be 24 hours of daylight or 24 hours of darkness.  That sounds likes wandering into the Great Unknown, and the beauty of the Great Unknown is the fact that I have experienced none of it.  

Maybe I'll hate it.  Maybe I'll move there and immediately regret it.  Maybe I will be back home within the year.  But I will never know if I don't try, and if I don't try I won't have a definite answer on what it's like to live in 24 hour sunlight or darkness.  I won't know what it means to be truly on my own.  I won't know what it's like to be in a place where your family isn't a 10 minute drive away. Oddly enough, I want all of that.  I want to come home to a huge dog, an overstuffed leather chair, and a chance to relax with a glass of wine and some home cooked meal.  Maybe I'll get a cat too.  But I will get them both at the same time, so they grow up together.  We can all start that adventure together.  Is this extreme? Yes. Stupid? Possibly. But I am my father's daughter and he moved 6,000 miles away when he graduated college, I only wanna move 2,500.

Sign me up.
I'm down for my great adventure.
Whenever it happens, I mean.