Another morning. I sip my coffee and breathe through the sensation of unease that begins to develop each time my thoughts land on moving; I have the keys, the lease is signed, and for the moment I live between places, in the thoughts of going from one to the other. It’s peculiar.

One day, one moment, of many.

Today moving begins in earnest. Do I move the kitchen first? Maybe the bathroom? Just start with the farthest closest? Patio garden first to get it out of the way of carrying things through the convenient patio door? Across the muddy strip of winter lawn? These are not new thoughts, and they drift past in more or less the same order that they do each time they get my attention, again. The repetition I rely on to firm up good practices is a nuisance this morning; I have been here and it does not need to be revisited. It’s the unease; there is anxiety in the magnitude of changes, and a fear of ‘doing it wrong’, even though the only person making the call on whether it is going well or poorly is me. My home, my rules, my way; I am the sole architect of my joy or discontent on this move – and I’m a tad irritated with myself to be throwing my heart into turmoil over something I approached with eagerness and enthusiasm from the outset. These are the emotional circumstances that develop for me around change, and the greater the change the higher the likelihood that I will find myself, at some point, weeping or raging – lost in a storm of uncontrolled emotion, unable to function until it passes.

I am relying heavily on myself on this move. I generally do, then get tangled up in the help of friends in moments of humanity, things lost or things broken, feeling frustrated when real-life doesn’t meet expectations. This time I am leaning on lessons learned in the most recent 3 or 4 moves; I will handle what I can, and reach out only for the specific help I really need, when that time comes. I have professional coming to handle the very heaviest pieces. The satisfaction in self-reliance is pretty profound, and I am in a place in life where living focused more on contentment than on profit has resulted in household goods of fair lightness, with only a handful of pieces I can’t lift or maneuver on my own. I expect to ‘work my own way’, which often means sipping coffee between tasks, sitting down for a minute quite frequently, and taking my time – but also working in an organized way, and quite continuously at my slow steady pace from waking to crashing at the end of the day, passionately involved in creating order from chaos. Embracing change awake, and aware, and mostly fairly fearlessly… well… except for the occasional moment of nauseating unease.

I am missing my traveling partner. I am not regretting my decision to handle the move without his help, though. Every move we have done together has taxed our relationship during that period of time between beginning the moving, and finally getting entirely unpacked and settled in; I don’t handle change well, and it is uncomfortable to live with. (That’s putting it mildly, based on what I see reflected in my journal notes.) I don’t know what to expect from this particular move, emotionally, and I endeavor to set myself up for success by being okay with the unknown, on this one, rather than attempting to nudge myself in line with some specific expectation or another; maybe this is the move that shows me it doesn’t have to be such a disruptive experience? I’ve come pretty far. Still… I do miss him. I think about him often. Love anchors me to the move with a sense of purpose and security.

New perspective.

One more work day… then, The Move, and only The Move. I figure I’ll be living in the new place more or less full-time by Thursday afternoon… which also means I will be disconnected from FiOS for a handful of days until the provider cuts over my circuit to the new location some days later. I consider it – is it an inconvenience? I can tether with my phone, so it isn’t as if I am facing being without connectivity completely… Funny that internet access feels like a necessity in life, like drinking water and secure housing, or medical care; it is the unimaginable future of my childhood.  Still, maybe some digital downtime while I move is an opportunity more than a headache? More room and time to simply breathe, simply be. There will be time for dissecting lessons learned and having meta conversations later, and there is much to be said for having the experience I am having.

Today is a good day for time…and motion. Today is a good day to ‘walk on’ in life, with eyes wide with wonder and a playful sense of purpose. Today is a good day to remember that plans are not the goal – just as the map is not the world. Today is a good day to live life.