“I’m moving on, I’ve got my car all packed with cassette tapes and sweaters and loose change”
Wedding Day by Rosie Thomas
Rosie Thomas is one of my all-time favorite artists, and words cannot explain how significant it was to me to see her in concert last March. Half of the time I felt myself close to tears, moved by the emotions and depth behind her lyrics. This is just one of many songs of hers making the moving playlist. I won’t be alone or flirting with cowboys, but I do feel that packing the car and driving across the country will be a grand moment of wistful liberation, painful growth and relieved joy.
(Pay no attention to the images, this was the best I could find online)
I had a startling and awesome revelation today. The 2012 Olympics will be happening right around the time we plan to move. As much as I’d like to find a job asap, I’m thinking it could wait a few weeks…right?
There are few reasons to keep that tv of ours: 1. The Olympics 2. Thanksgiving Day parade 3. Oscars. I figure if anything else is truly newsworthy then I can find it online.
There have been several points during this process that I have felt so isolated and alone that even a crowded room of people wouldn’t be able to convince me otherwise. The weight of what’s happening and how to handle it just seems to fall squarely on my shoulders. We each have separate feelings and emotions to deal with and sometimes we’re dealing so much with our own that we can hardly handle to take on someone else’s. That goes for me and the hubby, me and a friend, me and a co-worker, etc.
Whether it was because of distance, secrecy or lack of depth, I’ve had a hard time this past year knowing who my close friends were. No one is to blame and some of it comes down to the stage of life so many of us find ourselves in. With so much transition and change, it makes it difficult to keep track of who’s life is facing the most chaos. I’ve struggled, I’ve reached out, I’ve cried, I’ve given up and I’ve found it. For a while though, I thought it wasn’t possible. That close friendships couldn’t be created after high school or college and was even told as much.
You don’t have to throw me a pity party, because trust me, I’ve thrown a few of my own already this year. This isn’t one of them. Instead, this is me owning up to it. I’ve felt alone. I’ve been lonely. I’ve needed help. And really, I’ve just needed someone to say, come over and let’s eat chocolate and veg out. I’ve needed someone else to say, I need a friend.
So if you feel like you’re the only one, let me take a minute to be real with you – I’m struggling too. This kind of vulnerability is rare, and I don’t want it to come off as desperate. I’m willing to risk that though in order to let someone else know that they are not alone.
As we take this next step, I’m going to need some support. My prayer is that I find it in God, in my husband, in my family and in some good, solid friends. While I may be leaving a few behind, I’m hoping to find some friends ready to go deep, get real and plain hang out.
Sick. Do you see that thing? Well, something I’m hoping to leave behind is a wet basement. Pay no attention to the fact that basements are less common in the area we’ll be living in because as of this moment, we plan to temporarily stay in a basement. Regardless, I can’t wait for a nice, dry basement. Because that would mean I would see less of these creepy things.
Last night, I had the unfortunate pleasure of feeling a bit of a tingly “breeze” in my hair. It was about two in the morning, and I couldn’t sleep as it was and obviously found it fairly disturbing. A few seconds later I felt a scurry down my arm – jumped, screamed, flailed about and woke up the hubby. As soon as we pulled enough sanity together to turn on the lights, there it lay, twitching on the bed. Glad it was dead but let me tell you that without a doubt, I slept with the light on in hopes of keeping his friends in their hiding places. Ick, ick, ick.
Just kidding. We know the answer to at least some of those questions. Why are we moving? Well, a number of reasons. Here’s the quick bullet list:
It’s time for a change
We love that part of the country
We have no dependents, no debt and no mortgage tying us down
We want to establish ourselves as a married couple in a whole new place
Hubby wants to go back to school
We’ll be closer to some family (but farther from other family…)*
We’re ready for some adventure
*Let me touch real quick on the “closer to family” bit. We are excited to live closer to a nephew and niece and sister and brother-in-law. We are sad however to leave some wonderful family right here. That said, we feel this is where we should go now and are grateful that family will still be a part of that new location. By no means does this mean we are picking certain family over other family.
Okay, so, “why now?” Well, several reasons have contributed to that. We’ve been talking for quite some time about making this sort of move soon, but have waited for the right moment. Some might think going job-less is not exactly the right moment, but we’ll see. I mentioned the no dependents and whatnot – this is significant to us. We’re not sure how long we’ll be in a place in life that provides the flexibility we have now and don’t want to pass that up. We’re also feeling brave (dumb?) enough to do it. The past two years of being married we’ve been right were we should be. It wasn’t time to go between my poor health and the good opportunities we had at our jobs. Well, my health has improved significantly and due to some recent changes in the workplace, it seems apparent that now is a great time to go. More to come on all of the above, but that’s the quick list.
The world doesn’t need another band, per se. It doesn’t, strictly speaking, need another book or another photograph or another album. The general world population will survive… This is the thing, though: you might not.
I’m starting to think about that gulp of air. Sweaty hands rubbing. Biting my lower lip. “Um…”
Quitting isn’t easy. We’re both blessed that we like our jobs. We’re hoping that means our employers are also gracious when we tell each of them we’re leaving without another job. Turning down a good thing. Leaving something we enjoy.
Okay – interjection – as I’m typing this very blog post, a friend of mine texted to me say “I hate job hunting.” Everyone does! Oh my goodness, and I’m going to willingly give up a decent gig? Sigh. It’s part of the adventure I suppose.
But past all of that, I think we’re both sad to quit. Sad to leave our teams behind. We each work in tight-knit environments. On one hand, life will obviously go on without us and they functioned fine before us. But on the other hand, we’ve taken on some serious ownership in our jobs. We really care about the outcome of the work we do. We care about the people we work with. Quitting might cause some difficulty for those same people and the outcome of the work may suffer for a little while afterwards. That’s hard to take in. In a way, we’ll be the cause of that. Not too thrilled about that idea.
Unless something crazy happens though, we’ll be giving our notice in two and a half weeks.
Just say it. There are things beneath the surface. There are fears and frustrations that we each need to talk about. Where do they go? How do you say it? When do you say it? Who gets to hear?
The thing is, sometimes we don’t want to talk about those things. Or one of us does and the other one doesn’t. Or watching tv and playing video games is easier and less stressful. We have reasons to go, reasons to stay. Reasons for excitement, reasons for fear. Also, some straight-up logistics. But the logistics become a reminder of the other thoughts and mixed emotions happening and then it becomes a crazy conversation before it even leaves your head.
Right now though we’re trying to determine what needs to be said now, what needs to be addressed later and what we need to let go of completely. Because honestly, you don’t just go and restart your life with a new state, new career path and new life plan without having a few pieces of baggage to deal with (both literally and figuratively). In the past few months we’ve been hurt; we’ve been bored; we’ve been challenged; we’ve been confused; we’ve been excited; we’ve disagreed; we’ve been rejected; we’ve cried; we’ve dreamed; we’ve prayed and we’ve been blessed.
There’s a mystery we tend not to acknowledge until certainty has been ripped out of our clutching hands. And only when certainty is gone do we allow ourselves to bend and open to that terrifying mystery, dark and incomprehensible.
