Two Weeks
I have 2 weeks left to work. I already resigned a few weeks ago – I wanted to be sure they had plenty of notice. Most of my co-workers knew this was going to happen at some point, so nobody has been very surprised. I’m still in a strange state of disbelief that it’s really happening, and soon too! My emotions have been alternating between panic (at how much we still have left to do) to excitement to a little apprehension. I’ve been looking forward to this for such a long time that I’m surprised by that last one. I guess that giving up your normal life and packing all your belongings into a tiny bag for one whole year requires a little more courage than I expected. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still completely psyched about it and starting to get impatient for it to start!
I had a weird moment yesterday when I realized that I have two more weeks of work left. That’s it. Two more weeks of email, conference calls, and TPS reports (with the cover sheet, of course). And then I have a year off! It’s the exact opposite of every other vacation I’ve taken – off somewhere fun for two weeks and then facing a whole year back to work. I’m still trying to get my head around the weirdness of it. I’ve been working full time (and was going to business school at the same time for while) since the day after my college graduation. Whew! I’m tired and ready for some time with no ties to anything, schedules, or commitments. My first inclination was that this is too irresponsible, but now I’ve begun calling it “unresponsible” meaning we’ll have no responsibilities for a while, and that includes more than just work. No house to clean, no lawn to mow, no neighbors to keep up with, and very few bills to pay. The feeling is hard to put into words – a little sad to say goodbye to our stuff, but mostly happy to be free of it all for a while.
Besides my roller coaster emotions, we’ve been keeping ourselves busy and started packing up stuff for storage. It’s really amazing how much you accumulate. For each thing, I have to ask “Will I still want this a year from now?” and then “Will I want it bad enough to pay storage for it for that year?” As you probably guessed, as lot of stuff has been going to Goodwill or in the trash. The experience has been really good for me, getting down to the essentials and things that you really value vs. stuff you just felt like buying at the time. I suppose that’s enough philosophy for one blog post. The packing continues…
halftime