The Last Day

I am having this weird reality check right now. For more than a year and a half, I've planned, studied, prepared, and waited to get a job I've long dreamed of. For more than six weeks, I've known that a) I got that job, b) I was leaving my current job, c) I was renting my house, and d) I was moving to a city 500+ miles away. But I compartmentalize really well, and I've been caught up with the minutae of packing/moving/sorting/cleaning out/taking care of baby/finishing work/changing insurance and thinking about wills and reappraising things and looking for tenants and on and on an on. . .caught up in all of the details associated with changing jobs and moving. It JUST hit me, as I was standing at the kitchen sink rinsing out bottles, what a HUGE undertaking this all is. It JUST hit me. It is a HUGE change. For the longest time, it's been something that was going to happen, maybe, at some very distant point in the future. But all of a sudden, that day is really here. It's here. Tomorrow is my last day of work. The movers come in a week and a half. In less than two weeks, I will not live here any more, in my beautiful, newly renovated house. In less than two weeks, I will drive away from this house, and I don't know when I will be back. It doesn't seem real.

I have a packed day tomorrow. My office isn't quite cleaned out. I need to tie up a few loose ends. A client wants to meet first thing in the morning to talk about the status of a matter, and the new person isn't up to speed yet, so off I will go to do that. There is one last lunch out with colleagues. I am quite sure that I will run out of day before I will run out of things to do! (And don't even get me started on what a pain it is to find good tenants, and how much time I am spending answering questions and trying to appropriately screen them so we end up with some quiet, neat person who pays their rent on time).

Everywhere I go, I am suddenly struck by it maybe being my "last time." I think "this will be my last time shoppping here," at the grocery store that so conveniently is on my way home from work. "This is my last time buying baby things" at this little store I like so much. "This is my last time" I will sit in "x" type of meeting. "This is my last time" I will see this person. "This is my last time" I will do this task. It isn't sad, exactly, but it IS weird. I've lived this life, this path for so long, I can only think about my new life in the abstract. It's like, I know that it is going to be there, but it's hard to wrap my mind around.

But I just keep thinking, I am giving up something so that I can get something. I am giving up this house, this job, this place so that T. and Miss M. and I will be able to travel and explore and experience new people, places and things. I am letting go of the old so that I may change and evolve and grow. I just have to have faith that the things that we are running toward are at least equal in value to the things we are leaving behind. And I do have faith that this is the right decision, and that it will all work out just fine.

I just have one tiny, crazy fear. It's really, really crazy. I am so excited to move, so excited to start this new job, so excited for this new chapter of my life, that I am terribly afraid that something is going to happen to snatch it all from me. Mostly, I worry that I'm going to die, and not only will I miss the great happiness of starting off on this grand adventure, but my daughter will have to grow up without her mother (and I worry that I won't get all of the insurance coverage in place before that happens). Isn't that truly insane? But this is what I do. . .when there are plenty of perfectly good issues to worry about, I skip over those and go for the crazy.