Implications

So what are the implications of not getting a visa?

(Forgive me, I'm gonna think out loud so I can sort out my head a bit instead of writing this in my offline "real" journal, which is sitting at home.)

I've been dreaming of a move for nearly 10 years, living in the future, having a goal and a vision. If that's gone I have to live in the present, which is not such a nice place right now. I have to find new goals and visions, and I don't know what those are.

If I don't have an option to move to Australia, my parents will have no family there. They'll retire in a few years alone. They aren't coming back here - they see no future for old folk in this land. No-one else in my family is planning to move there. We can visit, but we can't stay forever.

I won't be farming - or farming easily at least. It's very dangerous for a single white woman to farm in South Africa, or the rest of Africa for that matter. I face the possibility of being killed within months. I don't want to live in fear like my grandparents do, sleeping with a shotgun under the bed each night on their farm. I would have been safe on a farm in Australia (and as you know from yesterday's post, there's one I've been eyeing for a while). Another dream either down the tubes or dangerously hard to impliment.

My son will have to do without his grandfather as father-figure, something I was basically counting on as he hits his teen years. He's never met his bio-dad, who now apparently lives in the USA and is married. He sees his uncles very little, and we don't really have close grown-up-men friends. I'm going to have to figure out how to manage this one.

I'll have to make hard decisions about work and church. I was holding out until the visa arrived - but if it isn't coming at all I need to see if this is really where I need/want to be, or if there is another path to follow.

I need to get a life and stop waiting for things to happen. I have to find/make friends and maintain relationships, not letting them slide because "we won't be here for long". I have to come out of the hidey-hole I live in and have a social life (I last went out on my own more than a year ago, couldn't find anything I felt like doing, and ended up back home watching TV with the dogs).

I have to start planning to send my son to his grandparents for a holiday, and save to make that happen. He needs to see them and is old enough to fly solo on the direct flight to Sydney. I need to think about whether I can make the trip too, or if the cost is just too much (R13,000 for both of us for a return ticket!).

I need to take a hard look at the things I've not done - getting my home as welcoming as I'd want it, the car replaced, things started and finished that have been put on hold "just in case".

I need to investigate whether New Zealand is an option, or not. And if I'm willing to start a whole new application again from scratch or if that is going to be just not worth the effort or expense.

I need to post this and get back to what I'm paid to do here.

::update:: (a couple of hours down the line)
OK, that was a load of negatives, feel-sorry-for-myselfs etc. Now for some good points.

I won't have to find thousands of Rands to move me and my goods to a land in which I'll be a total foreigner. I won't have to start at the bottom and work my way up again, starting off life with basically nothing for the second time.

I can get my Virgin Earth Organics and Virgin Earth Home-Crafted Products labels off the ground - I can start that business I've been wanting to do part-time and perhaps even move into fulltime stuff!

I can properly plan the community service ideas I have and know I have time to get them up and running.

I can repay financial debts to my father (amazing just how much parents give us in their lifetimes!) and get myself financially organized. I can start a serious savings plan for my son's education (if he doesn't choose apprenticeships etc as training after school), and investigate the home-school option for this area - if we still need to consider it.

I can get to know my due-shortly nephew face-to-face instead of by emailed pics, and be there to support my sis-in-law through her parenting learning curve.

I can plan that annual trip to my grandparents that we'd like to do, and plan to help them out with things they need too.

I don't have to sell all the stuff I've been collecting for years to furnish our house, nor panic that I can't sell my opals to make enough cash to move. I can use them to create things of beauty instead via the local jeweller and bring them out from their safe hiding place. I can enjoy having everything we need in our little house without having to refurnish from scratch - and I can replace the broken toaster, beater, microwave, front door handle, etc....

We can travel Southern Africa and see the stuff we'd have to come back from Australia on holidays to see. We can camp out as locals and enjoy this incredible land's beauty as one of the crowd, not a tourist. We can plan that holiday at Mana Pools, or the Kruger Park, or Namaqualand, or Namibia's Skeleton Coast, or.... We can go hunt semi-precious stones and walk the underground river in Lesotho. We can explore Mozambique's coastline and islands. We can visit Botswana's wild places and finally see the Okavango delta.

There are probably a load more positives - but already I'm feeling better.