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Nostalgia

I'm feeling strangely nostalgic as my trip nears an end. Perhaps "nostalgia" is the wrong word. That's a longing for the past. What is it called when you long for the present? What is it called when you feel emotion for a place that you know will someday become a memory? I suppose it's a type of anticipatory nostalgia.

I'm sure I'll be back, perhaps even this year. But the writing is on the wall. My days traveling to the UK for business are numbered. It's difficult to manage clients in the UK from Seattle. With the eight hour time difference, many of the people I need to talk to and work with are in the office from midnight to eight AM when I should be asleep. There are just too many late nights and early mornings with long days in between.

For the past year, I've been working to hire a team that can be based in the UK. My boss has always been based here. We've now been able to fill seven of the other eight positions. The only thing left is to find someone to take my job. I'm the last holdout and the only one not living/working full time in London. It was an odd feeling last week when I was interviewing someone for my job and they knew it.

It will probably be months before we can find someone qualified and many months more before they are fully trained and ready to take over my full role. The odds of me returning to London multiple times in the interim are pretty high.

Still, I'll miss this place. I'll miss the sea of faces, accents and costume. I'll miss the public transportation, tree-lined streets and old façades that make one want to walk slowly.

Nostalgia. It's a modern word derived from the Greek nostos meaning return home and algos meaning pain. Homesickness. If that's the meaning, then I have a severe case of authentic nostalgia. I miss my wife and children. It's been far too long.
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