#moving 2k17

[theemperorsfeather]

My mom emailed me with a suggestion from a friend of hers about a plant nursery I could potentially make an inquiry about work. ... Yeah, because cold calls are something I am so great at. “Hello, someone you might vaguely know said I should maybe ask you about work?” AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

...

BUT I’ve mentally drafted a letter. Next step is to type it up and then ignore for a few hours to give my brain more time to process it in the background.

And I can’t ignore the fact that I saw the email only minutes after I’d pulled some runes to ask what I should do in the near future about the finding-work thing - most of it came down to “nothing, just wait” but the first pair implied finding something after some sort of mess coming out of nowhere.

I hate this fucking process.

I’ve also finally, after months of feeling avoidant, gotten in touch with an ex-coworker to get lunch with him and a couple other folks from the ex-job. One of them is getting real close to retiring and I’d like to see her before that happens, and I have some very vague interest in catching up on how things are going. I mostly genuinely don’t give a fuck what’s happening with the company, especially because I got so fried there, but I worked closely enough with a handful of people that I developed some genuine feelings of caring about them. And I did say I’d keep in touch, and I meant it.

[theemperorsfeather]

I kind of thought that after my last trip to Central Oregon, I’d sort of put it slightly aside in my head for a while - not that I’d be forgetting, by any means, but that I wouldn’t have pangs for it, because I’d have had a “fix” that might last me until I get to move there.

Ha ha.

No.

(And maybe the visits never worked that way; I recall that very shortly after some previous trip, I was angsting to get back out there.)

So I have this view out the back porch of our fantastic local dormant volcano. And I love it, it’s wonderful when there aren’t clouds in the way and I can get a look. There are also views of the same peak from Central Oregon (and several others that I cannot see from Portland - holy fuck, the view of the mountains from C. Oregon is amazing), but of course the angle is different so the profile of the peak is different, and when I’ve been out there in the past, I’ve felt somewhat distressed at that difference. Some of it has been lack of familiarity, and some has been aesthetics - the view from the angle out there is not quite as symmetrical, it is rougher, more carved-out-by-glaciers.

But since my last trip, when I’ve looked east to see the peak, I feel this slight loss/wrongness at the shape I’m seeing . . . This is no longer The Prettiest View.

I’ve also been stuck on how good it smelled out there, even in the city I was spending each night! There is enough juniper growing in the city (Bend), in people’s yards and such, that the air smells like juniper and it is wonderful. Portland doesn’t smell like that. It doesn’t smell like much of anything.

That trip was the first time I’ve spent any meaningful time in Bend. And you know, the neighborhood I was in was pretty. I don’t really want to live in any city, but . . .

Also, hilariously, I’ve check the weather forecast out there recently and lo, I could have put that trip off a couple of weeks and had warmer, dryer weather than I had when I went. But I thought it was about to descend into COLD and NASTY for certain, and I didn’t do any pre-trip divination to check on the merits of going. (And Skadi recently got very insistent that I should do that before going on trips. Which makes me worry that there is some future trip I might go on where there will be Problems, and if I don’t do divination, I will encounter the Problems, and they’ll be bad enough that I need to avoid them.)

[theemperorsfeather]

I mean on the other hand, sigh, yes, it’s perhaps just as well I am still in Portland this month. It was certainly easier getting to MGW from here, and I’m going to the local druid group’s summer thing the end of next week, and I’m hoping I can carpool there . . . and then August is about over. (And I’m still not fully recovered from the burnout bullshit; I can tell because it took me several days to recover from MGW and . . . I should have only needed like, 1 day to catch up on sleep.) (And I’m doing a somewhat ridiculous bus trip at the beginning of next week to catch the eclipse, and that’s going to be tiring . . . )

This in-between stage, though . . . it’s kind of weird to cope with.

[theemperorsfeather]

I have never in my life been packing up and preparing to move from a place with less concrete idea about where I am going or what I’ll be doing when I get there.

[theemperorsfeather]

A small box of my outdoor plants went to a new home this afternoon; a BUNCH of them are going to a new place in another couple days. Visiting the garden will be a bit sad after that, but I’m very glad they all have homes to go to. It is a big relief.

Loki nudged me this afternoon and all the runes came out to the same kinds of “really. REALLY! Harvest etc. is coming!!” messages I’ve been getting from Him and Others for weeks now.

I decided to query the Lenormand to ask about what I ought to know about the next 7 days, and that - that looked really super promising an d concrete in the way that runes usually don’t. So here’s hoping I read them right!

I also asked the runes if I ought to start packing more boxes this week, even before I know anything job-shaped and first they were like, “Look. You’re leaving here” which. Did not answer the question so clearly???? I know I’m leaving?? So I asked if I would come to regret it if I waited until I had job things more clear (because then I might end up feeling panicky and so on) and then they said I should get my ass in gear.

So I’ve spent the last couple hours online. Not putting things in boxes. Good plan. A+ coping.

[theemperorsfeather]

Lots of the music I listen to has pretty strong memories linked to it related to where I was living when I first heard it, but these last 4 years are the first time where I’ve been back in a place with strong music memories (ignoring visits to my parents). It’s been weird having both that nostalgia and a new set of emotions and life changes and all that associated with my “Portland in the 90s” music, but one of those songs just came up and I realized all that music is now going to have a new layer of sadness layered over it in the future.

[theemperorsfeather]

The impending move/dramatic career change has also brought with it a remarkable sort of existential crisis of sorts. Part of why it’s remarkable is that I don’t feel nearly as freaked out or devastated as I think I should, but perhaps the realization/shock hasn’t set in properly yet. Or perhaps enough of me realizes that things are Right as they are, so all that other stuff? *shrug* What’s the fuss?

I am sincerely grateful to my Thoth deck, because when I need a check on my psychological state, I can generally count on it to be pretty clear, so even if it says “Yes you were repressing some things for a good long while,” I . . . well. I wanted to know what the fuck happened here. Where did my caring and passion about [stuff] go?! And it told me. (It’s probably more accurate to say not so much repressed as “so focused on somewhat the wrong thing(s), and building them up into A Lot, that the right things kind of flew under the radar for a very very long time.”)

----

Relatedly, while trying (again) to provide me some reassurance, Loki very helpfully explained that some of the stuff coming up will be (approximately) “So amazing you wouldn’t believe Me if I told you! so I won’t.”

sigh

Overall, that reassuring conversation was reassuring, but. The phrasing that comes across at times!

[theemperorsfeather]

Most of the plants in need of rehoming have gone on their way now. It was hard seeing some of them them slowly wilting after being dug up (even though I kept moist soil around their roots as best I could!), but I know plants are pretty tough, and once they’re put back in the ground, and watered attentively, they should all recover pretty well.

More boxes filled with books, and a bunch of tchotkes also boxed up. A troubling thing is that I have filled all the old boxes with “books” written on them from past moves, and I still have several boxes’ worth of books to pack up, but I don’t have more books than when I moved in here. Where the fuck are the rest of my book boxes?? I wouldn’t have thrown them out, and I was positive I’d found all the empties a few weeks ago when I started packing.

It’s not a huge problem; I have also hauled in a bunch of new empty boxes over the last year or so, but I’m perplexed, and annoyed thinking I may need to again haul out ALL the boxes under the bed to see if the ones I’m missing are under there somewhere. There are a number of filled boxes of books under the bed right now, that’s hard work!

Still no idea about work, future housing, or any of that good stuff, but being active distracts me from anxious thoughts.