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for the 3six5 project on my appointed day of the year to write, April 28th, which happened to be the day before the royal wedding and right before I moved to Chicago to work on the Obama campaign. Thought I would save it by posting it here.

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April 28, 2011

This is only about the royal wedding to the extent that it’s not about the royal wedding at all.

As of a few weeks ago I lived in London. I was pretty sure I’d be spending tomorrow—public holiday, thanks Kate and Wills—in the street outside a pub, lager in hand, making rude comments about the quality of hats on display on the Westminster Cathedral telecast.

I was poised to buy cheap EasyJet tickets to Athens this summer. I was thinking about getting a dog to walk on the heath. 

I saw my future self in the impossibly stooped old women I’d see walking the streets of Hampstead, nearly bent at 90-degree angles but still moving, small steady step by small steady step, toting their bright yellow Marks & Spencer’s carrier bags as they went. (Why always women? Why always Marks & Spencer’s? I never knew.)

Instead, the day after tomorrow I’m moving across the world to live in Chicago—a city I’ve never set foot in before.

This was not so much a decision as it was a phone call and a question and a sinking feeling that meant Holy hell this is going to be hard but I can’t not do it.

Will this prove to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done? Will I fail spectacularly or—possibly even worse—with relatively little fanfare? 

Will I ever get that future back, becoming that old stooped woman on the heath, my equally wizened and currently-still-hypothetical dog at my side?

I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. 

But for what I think may be the first time in my life, I am proud of myself. 

Because I‘ve finally learned what it means to be young, stupid, and a little bit brave—and that it is glorious, no matter the consequences, because there are few better ways to feel alive. Only took me 30 years and a few transatlantic moves to figure it out. 

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About the author: Laura Olin will try not to be an utterly crap friend between now and Nov. 7, 2012. She’s probably going to fail. She apologizes in advance.