I know that's common knowledge, but it hit me yesterday when I was making Tetris towers of taped up, labeled boxes in the office and all of a sudden there was just a small stack of miscellaneous stuff I didn't know what to do with but ended up dumping in a box that I pulled from the ever-shrinking stack of empties:
Holy crap. I'm actually doing this.
Anyway. The "OMG" moment passed, and I went out and had a lot of fun hanging out at James and Kim's for one last Rifftraxing before I move. Fast forward to today. I did some more packing, this time in the living room. I emptied out the coat closet (which was really more a strategically packed and delicately balanced blanket/Christmas/games closet) and boxed everything up. Mantle? Empty. The only things left out and to be boxed are my 2 lamps I need for seeing and the DVD player. I took all of pictures off the walls and promptly ran out of bubble wrap, so I stopped packing for the night.
Now I'm surrounded by newspaper, bags of shredded paper, and packed boxes, and all I can think is, "I'm really doing this." My timing is awful. I know that. I worry about the economy. I worry about finding a job quickly, and worry about what I will do in the meantime, if one does not materialize quickly. I worry that relying on the support of my family is going to come with a heavy blanket of guilt, not one that they throw on me, but one I throw on myself. I worry about them. I worry that this isn't the right thing to do, not because it's not what I want, but because of the timing. I worry about other things, like am I going to be a good enough friend from farther away, because history has told me that I won't be. And that really sucks, because I love my friends.
Underneath all of the worry and the self-doubt though, I am excited. I'm happy. Happy at the prospect of being jobless, penniless, and home-less (but not homeless)? No, not really. That would be crazy. I'm happy about where I'm headed, because eventually I will get there. Happy because I'll be able to see my family a lot more often than I do now, even once I'm out of their hair. Happy that I'll get to spend time with old friends again. Happy that a visit to/from Chris won't require 20+ hours of driving, a business-related excuse, or dealing with airlines and airports and throwing toiletries away. Happy at the prospect of starting over professionally doing something I actually enjoy, even if it means making less money. Excited at the prospect of possibly going to graduate school. I feel like I haven't been able to be excited or express enthusiasm about all of these things, because being excited about them means not caring about all of the things I know I'm going to miss about being here. And also because talking about how excited I am (or will be, once the employment situation resolves itself) seems a bit like saying, "So long, suckers!" to all of the aforementioned friends I love and miss already.
On the topic of things I won't miss...this week is my last official, full week at work. I will be so happy to be rid of that place. I guess I didn't realize it or admit it until I found out that they wouldn't let me work from Texas, but I've hated working there for such a long time. I've looked at my coworkers who have been there for 20+ years and have turned into socially inept hermits and thought, "Please don't ever let that be me." While I'm not excited about being unemployed, I will be happy to be rid of LOMA and the sinking ship it is. I'll not miss the monotony, the resistance to change, or the lack of teaching employees valuable skills that might benefit them (or that they might take anywhere else). This past month has been kind of agonizing...being given a leading role on a project that I won't be around to finish. Knowing that I'm leaving has made it extremely difficult to motivate myself to work, or to care about the end result. If they don't see value in keeping me around (because, really, I could do this job from anywhere. It's not brain surgery), I don't see the value in working my ass off for them before I leave. I've had a bad attitude about my job for a long time, but the past few months it's been really terrible.
It will be nice to not be angry or disappointed when I wake up and remember what I have to do every day. I may not have anything to replace it with yet, but I will. And even if I don't for a month or so, that's okay too. Who knows? Maybe it will give me time, energy, inclination, and/or inspiration to write something that I actually want to write for a change. Maybe it will even be good. Here's to hoping.
In the meantime, I am organizing my life into boxes, color-coding and recording and labeling the contents of everything, and throwing away sentimental things I no longer see the use in keeping. Every once in a while, I have flashes of me when I was packing up to move to Atlanta from Tulsa in September 2001. I remember how ready I was to leave, and how, despite that readiness, I would wake up in cold sweats in the middle of the night from bad dreams somehow related to the terrible mistake I was making by moving. Only, it wasn't a mistake, and I knew that even when I was waking up in those cold sweats. It was an incredibly good thing for me, but a questionably smart and very spontaneous thing to do. I'm glad that I did it. I'm glad I ended up staying in Atlanta longer than I ever expected. And most of all, I'm glad that I'm even more sure about it this time: moving now isn't a mistake, even if it seems that way from the outside.
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