Moving on up

I’ve been thinking for days about how to blog about the move. Wondering if I should talk about the process of cleansing that begins to happen but inevitably deteriorates into a frenzied throwing of things into boxes, with the half-ass promise to self to sort through it all later rather than leave it in the box for the next year or two. Or perhaps I could go over the way it feels to finally be free of living in a garden apartment, of how I did not realize how successfully I had managed to ignore the feeling of oppression of waking up below ground on a level where at any given time a person could have easily pried open a window, crawled in, and taken advantage of me and my things. My windows were numerous, easily-openable, and big enough for anyone to crawl through.

I could also dwell on the reason behind the move, the rodent issues and the fact that my landlord is giving me a bit of a deal that allows a soft move-since they are not filling my old place right away in order to do renovations. And I am ‘apparently’ getting a price deal to, although I have my reservations about that. But I have as much time as I need to pack and transition, and believe you me, I am taking it!

But instead of all that I want to just talk about how much time I have spent over the last two weeks sitting on the floor of either apartment, one right around the corner from the other, just staring. Staring at the floor, at the boxes, at my stuff-imagining it all nicely packed or nicely unpacked. Imagining the new things that I want to get-comforter, shower curtains, garbage bins, artwork. Trying to decide with my eyeball how much I will need to throw away and what I can make work and what I don’t want to make work. How much I wished by dint of desire alone, that everything that needed to be done would accomplish itself somehow. I was chatting with a friend about the things that were different about this move and he said, “Well, no matter how you slice it, moving is always a huge task.”

YES. It is. It totally blows. I stared at my things as if the pondering and planning inside my head would shorten the tasks of going through all the itty-bittys, and lighten the weight of each box of books I took from basement to second floor. As if it would somehow free me from the sweat and eliminate stubbed toes and fingers, scratches in skin and doors and walls and floors. But two-thirds of the way into my transition, I’ve had to face reality and accept that my staring did not actually work. As action finally flooded its way into my limbs and I began to carry things and throw things and move things, time started to ease its way by me and I realized a task I set aside one day for would in fact take several. I don’t know why I am so insistently naïve about this. This is my 13th move in 12 years. In college I went home every summer and came back to a new apartment or dorm each time. I’ve been lucky that it has been three years since my last move. And I just helped a friend with her move so really there is no reason for me to have been so in denial. But here I am. It is what it is. I am excited to be done with the transition and therein lies my motivation at the moment. I just hope it holds long enough for me to avoid the throwing of things into boxes that stay there forever until the next move and the next long contemplation.