I will readily admit that I’m a disaffected Australian. I don’t think I’m alone in this – so many people I speak to shake their heads in dismay at the limited choice of candidates. Do I want a Labor, or a Coalition government? No. Just no. I’d like to choose my Dream Team to run the country, a government of principle headed by Natasha Stott-Despoja, with a bunch of smart Greens (but not, I’m afraid, Mr Brown) and a selection of good thinkers from both sides of the House.

That’ll never happen, though. I’m resigned to the fact that Australia will never have a good government. We’re too big for our system of government, we’re too differentiated in our opinions and needs, and too apathetic to tear it down and start again. Oh yes, I become a right sooky-pants around election time.

Anyway, my initial point was that time has passed without anything substantive happening to eject us from the country. “You still heading to Tasmania?”, I’m often asked. For some reason people find it hard to remember that we’re crossing the Tasman – they just remember we’re going to some island or other. I’m pining for the west coast of the South Island. I could give you many reasons and also none; I just want to be there instead of here.

Meanwhile we are so busy with our community contributions that observers would be well-justified in their disbelief that we’ll ever depart. Miss Lee is of course still immured in her paid bushfire recovery role, while spending every minute of her precious ‘free time’ slaving over our region’s leg of the Great Vic Bike Ride (entertainment, stalls, traffic redirections etc), the art exhibitions surrounding the Eildon trout release, writing the 100k North Arts business plan, and much, much more. I’m rehearsing for a community play, leading regular community singing, bringing the orchestra to town, heading up 100k North Arts, organising a mini-festival of, well, mini-events … and yes, much, much more. It’s all a crazy beat overlaid on our already very demanding work lives. And, for the record, it’s making the idea of migrating to NZ more attractive, not less.

I just need to get on and complete those renovations so we can sell up. Please, another ten hours in every day!

I’m not complaining though. This whole venture has acquired a sense of pre-holiday anticipation. Each time I tell the story of our most recent trip or the latest little step we took, it’s just heightening that excitement. I’m really, really looking forward to being there and no longer being here.

In the midst of all this activity I also spent a day with my parents, then had to return for a while the next day because I left my laptop behind. We live about 90 minutes’ drive from their very suburban home and don’t actually see each other all that often. Dad sends emails when he wants something or when there’s a major family event. Mum’s not quite up to emailing yet, but it might happen now that I’ve got her set up with a desktop computer. The parents are outwardly quite supportive of us heading to NZ – Dad has very positive memories of living and working over there for a time in the late 50′s. I wonder, though, whether they’re dreading me being so far away. They’re in their seventies now and quite mobile, but they’re both at the stage where age is starting to catch up with them. Mum’s back is going to give out at some stage; she’ll probably become wheelchair bound. Dad, meanwhile, tends to drive Mum to distraction with his dodgy memory. We had good news this week when we learned that he doesn’t have dementia of any kind … although the joy of that news was leavened somewhat by the discovery that he had had a stroke sometime in the past, and that it would most likely be responsible for his memory and perhaps some of the behaviours around that.

There are certainly signs that Mum and Dad are thinking about some of the implications of me leaving. During my visit we got to talking about wills, solicitors, preference for cremation over burial, that kind of thing. A jolly conversation, that. I’m co-executor of their wills, and they asked whether I still believe I’ll be able to carry out those duties when I’m living in NZ. “Sure,” I said, “I would expect I’d come back for a week or two at a time to deal with things.” The subtext to all this was of course the question of whether I’ll ever come and visit them after we leave. The answer is yes, I’ll come back and see people from time to time, maybe one or two trips a year. I don’t want to lose touch with everyone.

As for the signs of movement that gave this post its title … there were two things this week that buoyed my hopes. The first was that my beloved completed her awesome CV (it’s her experience and skills that are awesome, not just the wordsmithing of the CV) and then lodged her first NZ job application. That felt like a big deal, a really substantial step toward departure. The second thing was that I received a phone call from a gallery in Whataroa that we visited a couple of weeks ago. We’d just been driving through town, stopped at the gallery and were impressed by the quality of the work. Talking to the woman behind the counter we learned that she was thinking about putting together a very simple website. We got her email address and were able to send her the easy steps to creating a site. Since then she and the owner had apparently been thinking about what a website might do for them … and so they called and asked me to put together a proposal for a fully-fledged e-commerce site. Very exciting. There’s a big smile on my face from having been asked.

Imagine how unbearably jolly I’ll be if we actually win the project.

Uprooting ourselves entirely and moving to another country definitely qualifies. It’s something we’ve been contemplating for nearly two years, and there is most definitely a sense of danger and even some fear of the unknown. How will it all turn out? We don’t know, and that’s pretty exciting.

When we talk to others about our plans however (yes, we do that quite a bit because we’re a little bit focused on our imminent migration) the responses we get aren’t quite so excited. We’ve had the whole range of comments, from “you’ll never go” right through to “we’ll start shooting down all the New Zealand-bound planes so you can’t leave”. Far from being a terrorist threat, the latter was a genuine expression of regret from a friend who really doesn’t want us to leave. I get that, and I know that there will come a time when we’re saying goodbye to everyone and everything and there’ll be that terrible sense of loss. It’ll pass though, and the excitement will rise to the surface again.

I wish that everyone saw this move as positively as we do. I think some people are annoyed that we’re changing the status quo, that we’re stepping outside of their expectations; I’m not worried about them. It’s the people we’ve laughed with and talked about our lives and dreams with that I really want to get on board. This is an opportunity, not just for us but for everyone who cares about us. Like it or not, we’re sharing this journey with every one of those people. Some of them will come and visit, others will stay in touch via email and Facebook.The Internet changed the shape of our world; we’re embracing that and capitalising on it. Once upon a time a couple like us would have had their entire circle of friends within walking distance. The car enlarged the radius of the social circle dramatically. Now the Internet means that our friends can be anyone we communicate with, anywhere in the world.

I think enduring friendship in the Internet age depends on a lot of factors, but one element is particularly important: the ability to connect intimately over long distances. It’s not just the capacity to write informative status updates, it’s also that X-factor of being able to express emotions in plain text. I mean real emotions. Emoticons and LOLs are fine for transient relationships, but deep and enduring friendships require empathy … and not everyone has the capacity to write what they’re thinking and feeling well enough to generate empathy across the cold wires of the Web.

Ultimately we have to get beyond what everyone else thinks of our move. We can’t guess the future, can’t worry about whether individual friendships will endure. Our next adventure is starting, and we hope to have old friends to share it with as well as new friends to be a part of it.

Today’s milestones: We appointed our NZ accountants, and in a few weeks we’re going to have a Skype conference where they’ll brief us on the tax system, on company creation and other business-related issues. Meanwhile, we received confirmation that Lee’s contract will end in a month or so … hence the job search is on for real.

The need to pause has never left me though. I have this great capacity to get caught up in things, whether it’s work or any one of my many community involvements. And the next thing you know I’m sitting up miserably at 4am trying to get something finished. The pressure has recently ramped up again – although to be entirely truthful it’s been more a case of the imagined pressure in my mind ramping up. So something had to give, and that was my work. I blew a mental valve and ultimately felt a lot better for it.

Still and all, something has to change. Fortunately, my wife and I are making one of the biggest changes of all: we’re migrating to a new country. Lock, stock and barrel.

We just returned from Hokitika, on the beautiful west coast of New Zealand’s South Island. That’s where our new home will be when we get organised. We need to establish a new company over there, sign on the dotted line with a bank and an accountant, and pick up some new clients, too. All of those things progressed very well during our trip – the excitement is starting to build.

It’s because of all this that I’ve returned to the Pausing For Breath fold, this time in written form. I’ll blog from time to time about our progress on getting this house ready for sale, on exiting all our local commitments, on panicking about money, about one of us heading over to NZ and leaving the other behind while we get established. It’ll be good for me to record all those things for my own memory … and perhaps you can pause for a breath of your own while reading this journal.

In the meantime … wish us luck!