Oh yes, I knew exactly what you meant. It IS exhausting to think about all the time. We realised, in our last ditch cold feet moment last week, that for every pro of moving home there is a con, and for every pro of staying there is a con. So in a way I’m glad I never wrote a list, although I always felt I should.
In case it helps, what we’re telling ourselves now is that in 2 years time this will all be irrelevant. We’ll be settled, and we won’t know how the path we didn’t take would have turned out.
And yes, your second post about new friends and neighbours vs old friends and family, I could have written that myself. We’ve made some amazing friends here, but I’m really looking forward to having, for us and especially for the children, our “people” around us again.
I keep telling the children that this is the hardest part (as it was when we moved here, but they were too little to really remember). We’re dismantling our current lives, packing up, saying goodbye, doing all these “lasts”. But we can’t see the benefits yet, because we haven’t moved. So although there’s an ending, we haven’t quite reached the beginning. And when we do, things will start feeling easier and happier. They seem to understand, and it was certainly my experience 3 years ago when we came here.