Self indulgent whiny long post--feel free to skip.

Written while I was off the grid. Literally just got back on and testing. Posting to embarass myself into hopefully not posting crap like this in the future. Is anybody even reading this thing?

Friday, December 03, 2010

5:13 PM

My silly computer still thinks we are on central time. That’s okay. I imagine I’ll be thinking that way for a while to come.

I’m sitting here in a pile of blankets, computer on the floor. Other than my inflatable air mattress, I literally have no furniture. Scratch that—I have a quilt rack I can assemble. I think I need to buy a bean bag chair soon. There’s nothing to be done for it, though. I don’t think we could have fit a single piece of mine into my tiny car.

As it is, it was packed tight as a drum and all the electronics appear to be functioning. Thanks to my family for that.

This entire affair, from the interview date to my leaving town for my new job took place over approximately 30 days, give or take a few. A month seemed reasonable at the time. And fortunately for me I ended up having lots of leeway (like being able to leave ¾ of my crap with my bro in our apartment).

But one month really isn’t much time at all for a move of this measure, in both the figurative and literal sense. People have been asking me how I feel, if I’ve been getting excited, et cetera. And my stock response has been, “I don’t feel anything but stressed. I’m too busy to feel anything.”

I wasn’t kidding. I had one “oh shit” moment late on Tuesday night, the night before I left. It was fleeting, but I’m sure a harbinger of things to come.

Now after three days of hard driving and 1/8 of today spent unloading my car and puttering around the house, I’m finally starting to feel some things. There is SO much to do, I should be doing it right now. My mind is still darting around like a hummingbird on meth. And I funnily enough, I currently don’t dread any of the massive amounts of unpacking and organizing I have to do. It’s purposeful work, with measurable goals, and I’m glad of it.

And as I sit here not doing it, I’m trying to convince myself that this is part of my new life. That I’m not going to rush around anxiously agitated. That I will take things in stride. I don’t really believe this, but I want it to be true. So maybe I can make it true.

But I highly suspect I’m also putting it off so that when some of these feelings get a little stronger, I will have some distraction.

So many people have said I’m brave for making this move. But I’m not. I had a job lined up, I know three people in this town, one of whom I’ll be working for/with—that’s called “having it all lined up.”

I’ve answered lots of questions about the reason for my move across the country. I’ve volunteered lots of things that were true and relevant. But this was a deeply personal decision that has aspects I’m not even willing to discuss---I figure that’s true for most people and their thoughts. Maybe I could put a pin on it by saying that this could be categorized as maybe my greatest decisive non-decision. That is, this decision sort of made itself. Or, to put it another way, there didn’t seem to be much to decide about. It’s hard to put into words, so we’ll leave it alone.

That doesn’t mean that I’m not going to feel the consequences. Even good things can have less than desirable effects. That might be the reason people cry at weddings—human nature recognizes the loss in alteration, no matter how good the alteration may be.

And if you could see inside my heart right now, you’d know just how not brave I am. A life lived in fear is a life half lived, it has been said, and I believe this to be true. But I suppose if I had to summarize the heart of all the unpleasant, shifting thoughts in my head right now it would be this:

This move, my dreams, they are the dreams of a young person. And I am not young anymore. The fearful part of my brain tells me that I’m too old for foolish wastefulness, too old to have my dreams come true, and too old to withstand the inevitable broken heart.

And maybe all that’s true. But then again, the reasons for my recent decisions were so multifaceted that perhaps even I don’t fully understand them all. And perhaps my fears are the only foolish thing here.

I have to go now. My cell phone is blowin up, yo. As it has been for days. That’s another funny thing—I’ve moved enough to know this one. For a tiny sliver of time I’ll be a topic of great interest and communication. Then, like all things absent, it will be out of sight, out of mind. I think that’s a necessary part of human nature as well—otherwise we would never get on with the present and be forever stuck in the past.

And so endeth my maudlin ramblings. Which I should probably not post and will feel very silly down the road if I do. But like the lady says: that has never stopped me before.