Moving

Retirement, like marriage, job changes, and having a child, is a life changing event.  Big changes are inherently stressful even if you are excited by the upcoming experience.  And in the months leading up to actually setting a retirement date I had those moments of fear and doubt that should probably be expected.  I’m sure I’ll have more anxiety on the retirement change in the coming weeks, but another major change known to cause stress is moving and right now that is the one that is consuming my mind.

It felt like a big step forward to have lined up our housing for the time between the closing of the sale of our current house and the last days we need to be in the office before retirement.  And obviously that was an important thing to get done and I felt great when it was accomplished.  But now each morning, as I’m getting ready for work, I look at all the stuff that fills a 3,600 square foot house and think “how are we going to get all of this packed”, “how are we going to get all of this moved”.  Obviously we have already planned on a lot of downsizing – I can walk through rooms waving my arm over lots of furniture we aren’t going to take.  But there are drawers and cabinets and closets to be dealt with.  And I am a collector – I have numerous pieces of lovingly acquired American Brilliant Cut Glass; I have a Department 56 Christmas Village and a Halloween Village.  I am a crafter with storage bins of yarn and fabric and patterns, a sewing machine, a serger, and an embroidery machine.  Oh, and a random bin of crewel embroidery and counted cross stitch.

And my husband, Chuck, has five guitars? Six?; lots of vinyl record albums; books.

We’re both making decisions to shed all sorts of stuff.  But some days getting the stuff we are keeping packed and moved, while still going to work everyday, seems daunting.  Our move to Nashville from California was a corporate relocation so we had next to nothing to do.  Our most recent move before that was a for a distance of about 15 miles and although we did our own packing there was lots of stuff we could just run over of an evening since we had access to the new house some weeks before we moved out of our old house.  Getting stuff ready to travel 300 miles……..I’m tired just thinking about it.