Another Year, Same Suitcase

Bumps on the road to a new life in Scotland

Hello! I hope this letter finds you well. Having drifted into the second year of whatever this is that I’m doing—traveling, writing, living out of my suitcase—I’ve started looking ahead. When I left the U.S., I told myself that I would travel for a year and take my time figuring out where and how I’d like to live.

Hint: this is it, or close to it!

Of course, I was hoping to just stumble upon the perfect place, like Diane Lane in the movie Under the Tuscan Sun, when she’s on a tour of Italy and sees a “For Sale” sign and yells, “Stop the bus!” I’ve encountered variations on this theme in memoirs and novels and the stories people tell me about how they ended up where they are. Cupid’s arrow just hits you out of nowhere, pierces your heart, and you fall hopelessly in love with a place that must be your new home, and you live happily ever after.

My journey has been more complicated. As I’ve been traveling, I’ve been taking notes, determined to consciously choose my future, rather than simply fall into it. Here is what I have discovered:

1) I’m not prepared to learn a whole new language. I want to connect with people, and trying to do that in another language is too much for me at this stage.

2) I don’t want to live in a city. I’d like to live in a smaller community where I can get to know people, preferably near a city with lots of culture happening.

3) After 23 years in New Orleans, I’m done with hot climates.

4) I’m in love with the sea!

Have you had enough of my pictures of the sea? This is in Cornwall, where I’ve been most recently. Letter to come about that!

5) Figuring out what makes a place feel like home does not require a pro-con list. You just know!

6) I want to spend my days writing and helping other writers, so I’d like to live somewhere that feeds my soul and has opportunities for connecting with other writers.

You’ve heard me sing the praises of Scotland, so it’s probably no surprise that as my year wound down, I was more than ready to find a place to settle down near Edinburgh, preferably on the sea. I had visions of a cottage all my own, with a tea kettle, a cozy couch, a desk under a window with a view, and a small bookcase I could begin to fill. I wanted to spend my mornings writing; my afternoons meeting with writers on zoom, walking along the coast, or browsing bookstores; and my evenings listening to writers talk about their work or listening to folk music in a pub. That was the dream!

Not by the sea, but I’ll take it! From cottages-and-castles.co.uk.

After drifting along for nearly twelve months, I was so ready to start my life over in earnest. I was exhausted. Over the past year, I’ve stayed in twenty different apartments or rooms. That’s twenty times packing up my bags; lugging them onto planes, trains, buses, ferries, and taxis; finding my new accommodation; getting inside; and figuring out where I’ll be able to eat breakfast in the morning and go shopping for groceries. This process is rarely smooth. Sometimes it has been a s*** show—trains delayed, connections missed, keys not where they are supposed to be, locks not unlocking, stores not open. So you can imagine my yearning for a little place to call my own.

I should also explain that I have felt “at home” in Scotland in a way that I haven’t felt anywhere since I was a small child. It was the home of my Boyd ancestors, and when I stepped off the plane, I had a profound sense of homecoming. It was uncanny. That feeling only grew in the coming weeks as I walked the Pentland Hills, took a train through the Highlands, and roamed the hills of Skye. This is what I had hoped would happen—that I’d fall in love with a place. I really didn’t know what that would feel like, but when this feeling of home rushed in, I just knew—this was it.

So I went after a visa. The only one I could qualify for in the UK is the Global Talent visa. Fortunately, with my book on Little Women, I had the kind of “evidence” they were looking for—publications and reviews in the U.S. and abroad. So I hired an immigration attorney and put together a file. I did a little dance and said some prayers when I submitted it.

When a response came in less than a week, I knew that couldn’t be good. I had been rejected—worse, they wouldn’t even review my application—not because of my “talent,” but because I was the wrong kind of writer. The Arts Council, which reviews the work of writers applying for the visa, will only consider fiction writers and poets. I was writing about literature, they said, not writing literature itself.

As evening falls on the Isle of Skye.

When the news came, I crashed. I felt hopeless. I'd followed my heart, and it had led me to the shores of a new life that felt so right. But then I was drifting out to sea again, in my own little boat, no harbor to aim for, the compass spinning wildly, and I was just trying to keep the boat from capsizing. 

Fortunately, I bounced back in a couple of weeks. I’ve gained some resiliency through the ups and downs of the past few years, thank goodness. The last thing I wanted was to continue roaming Europe or the U.S. in search of another place that could feel like home. So I began to explore another way to stay, at least for a while.

Nearly all of the Americans I’ve met in Scotland first came on student visas. So I’ve decided to become a student again! I’ll apply for Masters programs in fiction writing. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve always wanted to write a novel. And I know that I need help. Pursing another degree and trying to write a novel and publish it is daunting, but still very much going in the direction of the life I want. The start date would be next September, so that means another year of coming and going on a tourist visa.

I can stay in the UK for up to 6 months at a time. So I will spend most of my year in Scotland, and I will look for apartments I can lease for a few months at a time. And when I have to leave, I’ll stay in familiar places to reduce the stress of so much change and moving around. A lot of uncertainty still lies ahead, but less than in the past year.

I’m curious, have any of you have gone back to school later in life? If so, what has that been like for you? Also, if you’ve studied creative writing, do you have any advice for me as I research programs?

Until next time (when I’ll tell you about the cool course I took in Cornwall),

Anne

P.S. The photo at the beginning is of the Firth of Forth from the town of Gullane, east of Edinburgh. I just spent a month there and did not want to leave. Sigh.