One Week

Mood: Waking
Song: Love Song - The Cure
Units of Caffeine: .5
Days Until "M" Day: 7

One week from now the moving truck will be loaded, K, Dr. L and the nutcase, (who I will now refer to as "Monk"), will be fueling ourselves with breakfast before we head off to the Pacific Northwest. It's funny - The closer we get to "M" Day, the faster time seems to fly. Last night, I got my hair cut, ran an errand, made dinner, and packed up more of the abyss that is the kitchen, and next thing I new, it was 10:00. I guess the difficult thing is fitting everything in this week. We had our goodbye party this past Saturday, but there are those people who couldn't be there, or couldn't stay long, or that we just want to see again one last time before we go. We're still packing and getting last-minute things for the move. And this is our last week of work, so we're all trying to tie up lose ends there.

I have mixed feelings about leaving work. There have been some crappy times, but, on the whole, it's been a great job. I mean, I complain one thing ot another every once in a while, but there are a lot of my friends who have some shitty, shitty jobs. Comparitively, I work in the garden of Eden. And not just that, but my boss and co-workers have been amazingly supportive of me with everything that I have done, from doing community theatre shows to completing my Masters thesis - I remember the day when my thesis project went down the toilet and I needed to wipe the board clean and start at square one - My co-workers bought me a cake and a card to tell me that I'll get through all of this. I've been working with these people for nearly five years; the longest time I've held a full-time job. I'm going to really miss these people.

The party on Saturday was a little emotional, too. Not so much when people were at the party - but after the party, when everyone had left. A LOT of people came. In that one night we saw exactly how many people touched our lives in the past five years - It was very heartwarming. Monk has been writing in his blog about our bipolar nature right now: jumping between excitement about Seattle and the sadness of saying goodbye to our friends, and he divided "M" Day into two parts: The Leave and The Move. The Move is going to be fun and exciting - The Leave is going to be really difficult.

Mood: Surreal
Song: Siuil a Run
Units of Caffeine: 4
Days Until "M" Day: 13

Sheesh, it’s been a long time since I blogged – and, as always, it’s not for a lack of wanting. I am less than two weeks away from moving day and the reality of it hasn’t quite settled in yet. You would think that reality would have smacked me in the face a long time ago, when K & I sold our house, or even earlier, when the “For Sale” sign was put in the front of our house. Even as I sit in my office which gets more and more barren with each passing day, as I take personal items home, it still hasn’t hit me. I feel very surreal – kind of like an out of body experience. I guess I’m too busy to really dwell on what’s going to happen. Between packing and the everyday bustle of work at my job, I can barely plan ahead enough to think about what I’m going to have for dinner, let alone plan out the next two weeks. I’ve had to put the job search on hold just because I don’t have the time to focus on it, and believe me, I need the time to focus on it. Proof of this came last week in the form of a phone interview. A perspective employer left a message on my answering machine for me to call and schedule a time to have a phone interview. I called, expecting to set up a time, but instead, I found myself floundering my way through what had to be one of the worst interviews of my life. I wasn’t prepared mentally or physically. In the meantime, my life is just all about working and packing – packing and working. I’ve spent the last few days working on the kitchen, which HAS to be the worst room to pack: It not only feels like an endless stream of crap to pack, but almost everything has to be individually wrapped. I am in hopes of finishing it up tonight.

This morning, I woke up insanely early for some reason, which gave me some time to catch up on some blog reading. There is a friend of mine who began a year-long adventure in Hong Kong about three weeks ago. She said that there is a fine line between worry and excitement, and I couldn’t agree more. I find myself wavering between these two emotions a lot. Something else that I have in common with this friend is that I really want to document this adventure in my life. Six years ago, I took the bold step of moving away from my home town. Hell, I did much more than that – I moved out of my home state, across the country to Las Vegas. Although my time in Vegas turned out to be one of the lowest times in my life, it was an amazing journey (both figuratively and literally). I drove out there with a friend of mine, (whom I haven’t seen since), and I remember having deep conversations while seeing some of the most incredible sights this country has to offer. I did not have a camera, nor was I really into my journal writing at the time – So, I have no documentation of the trip. I cannot tell you how much that upsets me.

But looking ahead to this new journey; I think about how much cooler it’s going to be. You see, I was going through a really emotional time when I went to Las Vegas – I was heartbroken; moving with no direction*; and just “empty.” (*There is both a figurative and literal interpretation to this as well – My friend and I got onto the NY State Thruway and, in our haste, forgot a map and had no clue where we were going other than “west”). With this journey, however, I have found my compass. I am not going to Seattle because life threw me there. For the first time in my life, I am moving somewhere because I WANT to move there. And the best part – I get to share this journey with K. There were several places that I stopped, on my way to Vegas; places where, as Forrest Gump put it, I couldn't tell where heaven stopped and the earth began. At almost every minute of that trip, I had wished that K were with me. And now she is.

I found my compass.