EP 14 — Time Zone Tales with Maria

Transcript

0:01

Hey. Hello. Anyone there? Oh, right. You are all asleep. Welcome to Almost Local, where I record things at 7:00 AM while the rest of the world is still living in yesterday. I'm a host Maria reporting from the future. Literally, it's officially been four months since I moved to New Zealand. Which means I've survived the honeymoon stage, dipped into confusion, and I'm currently living somewhere between stage one, stage two, and stage three all at once. You know that delightful combo of excitement, mild chaos. And why is my best friend always offline? So you want to stay in touch after moving across the world. Cool. Good luck with that. We are officially one day ahead of everyone. One whole day try texting your friend in Amsterdam on a Tuesday morning. They'll be like, wait, what? It's still Monday here. Why are you so intense, Maria? I am trying truly, but time zones are ruthless. By the time they're free, I'm brushing my teeth and emotionally done for the day. Calls get missed. Dms pile up. Even emails feel hard sometimes. I think friendships are brought. Need a survival kit? Yes, survival kit, like a shared Google calendar. Unlimited patients and caffeine. Lots of caffeine. This is the part of expert life. No one really prepares you for. That slow drift where connection starts to stretch, not break, but stretch where we'll talk soon turns into, wow, it's been six weeks or six months. Nothing's wrong. You're just live on opposite planets. I used to take it personally. Now I just laugh because honestly, even my WhatsApp groups are on different timelines. I think that's what stage two and stage three really feel like. Sometimes when the novelty fades, you are building your routine and you realize you are rebuilding your connections too from scratch across oceans in weird hours. Yes. I have learned something lately. Connection doesn't always mean real time. Sometimes it's the voice note that arrives at 2:00 AM or the message you see while half asleep that still makes you smile. It's learning to love people on a delay to hold on without holding tight to trust that you're still part of each other's worlds, even if you live 18 hours apart. That's the beauty chaos of being almost local. You're here, but your heart is still sending postcards from everywhere else, so to everyone trying to stay connected across time zones, how do you do it? Well, you're doing it great, truly. We might be opposite to it all, but we're still here, still almost local, just in a different dimension. Thanks for listening and for being part of this with me, especially as I hit my four month mark in New Zealand. I'm off to my morning coffee in this sunny day in Auckland, and if you're awake somewhere in yesterday, send wave from your time zone. Let's keep it going. One story, one stage, and one coffee at a time.