Where this story began

Once upon a time, I was a tenured faculty librarian at a mid-sized regional state university. There’s a lot that I loved about that job. I bought a house and planned to spend the rest of my career there.

And then, we got the double whammy of a toxic university president who started right at the very beginning of covid. To be fair, the university admin didn’t directly affect me personally, so much as I spent a lot of time being angry on behalf of other people. But morale across campus dropped through the floor.

I know that living through a pandemic was traumatic for most of us. I didn’t see anything more than photos of how bad it was in places like New York City. But living in Atlanta while following actual epidemiologists and other experts was its own brand of awful.

I don’t honestly remember a time when I could go to the grocery store and see more than half of the other shoppers wearing a mask. Maybe it happened at the very beginning, but my memory of that time was feeling like no one was in touch with reality.

But then, the vaccine came out. Georgia was way behind the curve in terms of vaccine rates. But, data quickly started showing that while the vaccine protects against the most acute symptoms, it doesn’t prevent all infections or long covid. And frankly, that’s what always scared me. I’m not in any rush to die, but I’m also not afraid of death. But I make my living with my brain – debilitating brain fog could take away my ability to provide for myself. And I keep myself sane by going for long walks – stories of marathon runners no longer being able to walk a block without getting out of breath terrified me.

And that feels like a digression, but it’s part of why I reacted so strongly to the next big university policy decision.

As soon as the CDC dropped their mask mandate, the University System of Georgia issued a new mandate: we were not allowed to require anyone to wear a mask anywhere on campus.

So you expect me to come to work in an office on campus, but I can’t ask someone to wear a mask to reduce my risk of catching a potentially disabling disease?

I got the message loud and clear that my employer didn’t care whether I lived or died or became disabled.

I’m still not entirely over the moral injury that caused.

But, back then, I was able to work almost entirely remotely.

This was all simmering in the background, until it boiled over.

One day in January 2022, I went to take my dog for her daily walk.

And I was GROUCHY.

Like, right off the bat, grumbling about these fucking assholes who always put their garbage bins in the middle of the fucking sidewalk instead of having any consideration for anyone who might be trying to walk here…

On a side street where you have to walk out into the street regularly anyway, because the sidewalks are busted all to hell. Because Atlanta treats sidewalks as the homeowner’s responsibility instead of as a public good, and the city had disinvested in this neighborhood for decades.

Like, yeah, they were inconsiderate, but my reaction was all out of proportion.

And I started reflecting on just why I was reacting so strongly.

I realized that I just wasn’t happy where I was. Even golden handcuffs chafe.

I realized that I needed to make a drastic change.

By the end of that walk, I felt lighter than I had in a long time. I didn’t know what that change would look like yet, but I had a project to get started on, instead of just feeling stuck.

A serendipitous conversation

Back in December 2021, I had a conversation with a neighbor that could have been nothing, but turned out to have a big influence on the next few years.

She was planning to gtfo the US, and was in the process of getting her ducks in a row* to move to Portugal.

And she was so excited to tell me all the reasons!

One that stood out to me was the fact that within something like 6 months of the covid vaccine coming out, something like 85-90% of the population was fully vaxxed.

At this point, I was still attached to the security of tenure and planning to stay where I was.

But when I realized that I needed to make a change, thinking back on this conversation opened my range of possibilities.

* I can’t remember the first time I heard that expression – “ducks in a row” – but I didn’t realize that was a thing that actually happens until I went to Indonesia in 2008 for a language training program, back when I planned to become an anthropologist!