Happy pack-out day to you all!  I’m sitting here in on the floor of my bedroom, watching two very awesome hard working movers lovingly pack my knick-knacks in bubble paper.  They are hustling to try and beat the impending snow storm headed my way, and yet here I sit, not helping.  All of the instructions I received from State told me DO NOT PACK YOUR OWN BELONGINGS!  There’s a few reasons why.  Namely if I pack something myself and it breaks in transit, the moving company can’t help me, and also there’s no guarantee I won’t put something sneaky or dangerous into one of the boxes and put people at risk.  So here I sit, trying to stay out of their way while still trying to provide some level of supervision to the process.

My situation isn’t entirely typical of all State employees, since I am moving from the Midwest to the East Coast, and then on to the next post abroad (hopefully.)  Plenty of new hires are already from the DC area, so they get to skip this step.  So I have to separate my items into a couple different piles:

• Things getting trucked to a storage unit in Maryland

• Things getting sent to my furnished apartment in DC

• Things coming in the car with me on the drive to DC later this week.

Then of course there are the endless piles of items getting thrown away, getting donated, things I’m leaving for Nate, etc.  My place has been a war zone for the past week so it’s nice to see things starting to get cleared out so I can see my floor again.

Thursday begins the drive to DC, and luckily my mother has graciously offered to ride with me to so I don’t have to go it alone.  We will break it up into two days so we can handle the inevitable weather delays that we will encounter.  Move-in is on Friday, and I’ll have a couple days to settle in DC before starting work on Monday.

MONDAY.  I start work on Monday, how is that possible?  I barely slept last night, and when I woke up throughout the night my heart was beating a mile a minute, I think it’s safe to say I’m relatively stressed out at the moment.  Quitting my old job, starting a new one, leaving STL, starting again in a new city, all while anxiously awaiting to find out what country I’ll move to this summer.  (BTW, I find out on Feb 25th!!)  It should surprise nobody that I’ve found a few more grey hairs lately.

But hey, these are all good problems, and I know that.  Nothing worthwhile is ever achieved inside your comfort zone, so bring it.  I will just try to keep breathing in and out, and remembering that I chose this.  On purpose.