Final Anxiety

I got the call today: the truck will be arriving tomorrow between 8 and 9 a.m.

At first I was just happy. By this time tomorrow, all my stuff will be in my house. Sure, most of it will be in boxes, but they'll be in the right rooms (if I labeled them correctly, that is. Did I?).

And so begins the last-chance for anxiety and worry as my move moves to its close.

Will the truck fit into the driveway? (There is no parking on my street.) Will everything fit through the front door and up the stairs, or will we have to lug things in through the balcony door on the upstairs floor? Will we have to take doors off their hinges to get things to fit in?

So images go spinning in my head. Fleeting, nightmarish concoctions of my subconscious; all the things that could go wrong, might go wrong.

My sensible side says these people are professionals. They've moved stuff into much more awkward houses than mine. They've moved much, much more stuff than my 4.5 vaults of belongings. So what if we have to take a few doors off to accommodate the bigger items. (Oh God, do they have tools? I don't have any tools; they're in the vaults on the truck!)

And so it goes, round and round, and I have a feeling that's exactly what my dreams are going to be like tonight. I will sleep fitfully and wake up an hour early. And once all is said and done at 325 West Ave. S., I will crash on my naked mattress and fall into a deep sleep.

On the lighter side, I replied to the e-mail from the local television station. I had applied for a part-time job working on the floor crew for the local news. Ends up they're only paying $7.50 an hour and the schedule is two split time slots of two hours apiece. (In other words, work for two hours, go away for three hours, then come back for two more hours, every day, all the time.)

I then turned around and applied for a job at the local newspaper doing prepress assembly and template building for the daily paper. The hours there are noon to 8:30 p.m. I wouldn't have to change my schedule much (I usually sleep from 2 a.m. to 10 a.m.), but it would preclude my getting involved in any sort of theater that rehearsed in the evening.

It would be nice to have benefits again, and I would have a chance to sock away some more money for retirement, but it would also mean going back to a full-time job. The nice thing about the situation is I am able to turn down employment for this first year. Perhaps I'll interview, turn down the job and then wait for something a little more suitable to open up. I've got a whole year.

See? Writing about the job stuff really calmed me down. Just like unpacking boxes will really calm me down tomorrow. But until I have all my stuff in my house, I'm going to have this anxiety.

I think I mentioned in an earlier post that my dad once said anxiety is just excitement that you're sitting on and won't let out. If this is the case, perhaps I should do some silly dances and whoop and holler (luckily, Amanda is working tonight at the bar in Ettrick, so I'm alone here). That might do it, bring me to a peaceful, joyous center that would allow balance and harmony in my soul.

But, hey, where the hell's the fun in that? And I don't think that would be enough to unbind the knot in my bowels that's been building all day. And it might not be such a good idea to unbind it until I'm in a position to really let go. And I've unpacked the toilet paper. (Did I pack the toilet paper? Oh, no; here we go again!)