Further South than Planned

This book cover is pinned up in my studio. I found it randomly, without knowing anything about the book itself. But the title—it felt like it had been written for me. I am, indeed, further south than planned.

I will never love the heat, the way the air wraps around you like a wool blanket in the dead of summer. I miss the country lanes, the morning call of the blackbird. I long for autumns that linger, summers that know when to leave. And I miss all the places that hold memories I cannot pass down—the swimming holes that held whole afternoons, the windswept moors where I walked for miles without a destination —they exist now only in memory.

But roots take hold even in unexpected soil. I have built a life here, not the one I planned, but one that is mine. And further south than planned is no longer a statement of misdirection—it is the shape of my story.