How Not to Move
As we finish unpacking the boxes from our move to Buffalo WY and I can actually see the floor, I've been thinking and what I would have done differently if I knew in Los Angeles what I know now about getting ready for a new life.
Tell everybody you're leaving, and then stay.
The best way to extend anxiety and frustration is to tell everybody WAY in advance about one's intentions to leave.
We packed for a month. The boxes piled on the living room floor turned into a maze, to the point that we didn't even want to walk into the condo.
Our dogs threw screaming fits anytime we left, and found clever ways to display their displeasure at the chaos.
We gave our friends ample time to wonder if our brains departed our bodies, and to ultimately not believe anything we said (many of our friends were shocked when we said goodbye).
Our friends who took us more seriously frantically made dates to see us before we left. Even though we gave ourselves plenty of time to decide what to keep and what to give away or toss, we found ourselves tossing more than we kept to both see our friends and finish packing before the movers arrived.
I gave a month's notice at work, giving me an extra 80 hours to bounce between wishing I could stay and wishing I could leave in the next five minutes. It was exhausting.
Don't leave it all behind.
OK, I admit it. If I had to to it all over again, I would have literally left it all behind. Well, most of it.
The movers didn't deliver our stuff to us for a month. In that month, we realized that 95% of everything we packed was sentimental value only, and that we could survive quite nicely without it. While that sentimental stuff makes our new house a home, I've certain that with time, we would have found other mushy ways to build our nest.
Because we both worked until the day before we moved, we brought souvenirs of work with us. What will we do with those lanyards to hang badges we no longer carry? What will I do with all those purses and briefcases?
I can now answer that last question. I astounded my husband by donating about half of those purses and briefcases. He owes me a nice dinner.
Wait to follow your dreams.
I should have moved here sooner. Decades sooner. Never mind that I might never have met my husband or some of my friends, I might have done something other than writing for a living, and that my life wouldn't be as comfortable as it is now.
I was a misfit in Los Angeles, a small town girl in a big city. Los Angeles is a rat's nest of too many people crowded into too small a space, too much noise, too many tall buildings that block the sky, and inconvenient conveniences. And what do rats do to each other under those conditions? It's ugly.
Instead of getting out of Los Angeles as soon as I understood how toxic it was for me, I planned my escape. Who knows how much time I chipped off my life span, just to make certain I was making the right decisions.
In my next life, I won't spend time researching and planning. I will do whatever I have to do to leave as quickly as possible. In my next life, I won't be meticulous and anal and financially conservative. In my next life, I will follow my dreams before they fly away.
