Life is not a test you are going to fail.

How do you ever know if you found what you were looking for? 

Is it just a feeling you get in your chest that tells you a goal has been met, or is it more obvious like a calendar marked with a big red X on the final day of the month? Nobody is going to tell you when it is time to move on and nobody is going to tell you to stay because you have not completed this path yet. 

When we enter a new chapter, the feeling of closing the last one does not always come with confidence. Sometimes it feels like the page suddenly ran out of words and now you are supposed to start reading the next page without any clue what has happened. 

If you pack your bags and say you are never coming back, there is this feeling you get. It is not a gut feeling that what you are doing is right, but more like a detached excitement that somehow this will give you a feeling you have been craving for so long. 

The first step into a new apartment building, or the last time driving a street you hoped you would slowly start to see less of each year. 

The longing for a feeling of rightness will always leave you feeling wrong. 

You will never know what to do next and when you finally do make a decision you'll be in constant fear that it is the wrong choice. 

So, we pack our bags because we know we need a change. We know we need to do what we always said we were going to do. Hoping that once we get there, once we have met that dream face-to-face, that feeling of I did the right thing will slap us in the face. 

That slap in the face will never come.

A warm breeze on your skin when you step out on the balcony, a new coffee shop nailing your latte order, the bookstore worker telling you she likes your shoes, a coworker complimenting your courage, closing your maps app on your phone because you finally remember the route to your favorite spot in town. These are the slaps in the face, they are subtle, comforting, and memorable. 

If we do not stop to soak those moments in while we are living in the decision we made, then we will miss them. We will sit around thinking that nothing ever felt like home, the city hated you, the people did not understand you. 

Take a beat and let it in.