Lo, there shall come an ending .... and a fresh start

I think it’s fashionable to start good-bye columns with “I never thought I would be leaving Destin,” but that wouldn’t be quite true.

During those horrific hurricane seasons in 2004 and 2005, I thought about leaving Destin quite a lot (and if the storms had kept coming at that rate, I might have already). And I’ve thought about it every time my health insurance premiums go up another notch and my take-home pay goes down.

But I’ve lived on the Emerald Coast since my family arrived here in ‘69. I know the area, I’m at home here, I have a wide circle of friends, and hurricanes aside, I love the weather (too hot is so much better than too cold). Put those factors on the scale, and time and time again they’ve outweighed the desire to move.

And then came the 2008 Mensa convention, where I saw a woman reading after breakfast and, recognizing the book, went over to talk to her. Purely out of literary interest — the fact she was very cute didn’t factor into it. Not in the least. Honestly.

After the convention, LeAnn contacted me on the Linked-In networking site, which I thought might be some 21st century pick-up technique; it wasn’t, but not knowing that, I e-mailed back and after we’d traded letters for a while, began flirting. She liked it so we graduated to phone calls, then face-time (down here, up where she lives, and at various Mensa events) and two months ago I proposed. As we’re both fed up with only seeing each other every two or three months, and as she makes three times what I do, I’m leaving The Log and moving to join her in Durham, NC this coming weekend.

LeAnn is a computer geek who oversees the epa.gov Web site, awesomely intelligent, extremely bookish (a big plus with me) and very quick-witted and funny. And for some unfathomable reason, she loves me.

So as we write this, I’m struggling with packing, a seemingly endless task where no matter how many boxes are filled and taped, I seem to need just as many the next day. I will feel so much more relaxed when everything is finally boxed and ready to go.

Not completely relaxed. I know learning to live with each other on a daily basis will be very different from long-distance. And leaving my job when I don’t have a new one yet is rather intimidating. And let’s face it, I’m going to miss this place.

I’ll miss my geeky, good-hearted friends. I’ll miss having a reliable street map in my head (it’ll be a long time before I can navigate Durham as easily). I’ll miss the people I know in Destin, my co-workers at The Log and the staff and councilors at City Hall.

I’ll miss writing for The Log.  I’ve been a freelancer and fiction writer for years, but this was my first chance to work full-time as a writer, and I’ve loved it, whether I was reporting on local authors, road closures or City Council meetings. I know I’ll continue writing in Durham because that’s what I do, but I have no idea for who or about what.

If I had seven-league boots or a Star Trek transporter, I’d happily keep my Log job and commute down to Destin from Durham. But I don’t, and the alternative — keeping everything I have here and doing without LeAnn — isn’t a choice at all. So off I go.

I know plenty of people whose rock-solid relationships turned out to be a house built on sand, yet I feel confident that LeAnn and I will work out. Even if I’m wrong, I agree with the Czech playwright Vaclav Havel: Hope doesn’t mean believing everything will work out, it means you’re doing the right thing whether it works out or not. Moving up to her is absolutely the right thing.

Or as Nancy Sinatra sang in “You Only Live Twice”:

“Love is a stranger.

That beckons you on.

Don’t think of the danger.

Or the stranger is gone.”

Not that North Carolina is all that dangerous, but you know what I mean, right?

Fraser Sherman is a Log reporter and can be contacted at (850) 654-8442 and fsherman@thedestinlog.com