Sadness about Missing a Milestone.

I made a decision yesterday. One that makes me a bit sad. I chose my moving date. On 12 February, a truck is going to come and pack up all my things and take them away. They’re going to disassemble my piano and store it in chunks. Wrap up all my furniture and put it on a truck and then keep it for 3-10 days. Finally delivering it to ECC on 48 hours notice. And charging me enormous sums of money if I can’t arrange for it to be delivered when they say. Which is reasonable. If I wanted a specific delivery date, I could rent a whole truck. For like, $35,000.

Things are coming together, but it’s very frustrating. I feel like everything is looming and piled up in precarious towers. Like the junk in the Room of Requirement. I pull on the wrong thing, and it all comes crashing down. I do much, much better when I’m coasting in a steady routine. This is about as big a disruption of my routine as is imaginable. Well, barring catastrophe.

But objectively, things are coming together in a neat bow. My house is rented for a year. And LawnBoy and his LawnWife are going to manage the property for I have an apartment in a great place, close to work. I have figured out how to sell my car. I’ll get less for it than I might if I were willing to invest more effort in it, but more than I expected when it first occurred to me to sell it. So I consider that a fair split. And it’ll finance a nice vacation for me. The major things I have left to handle are utilities, and actually getting my ass to ECC.

I’m still thinking about my budget. It’ll be roughly the same, all things considered, I think. My rent is going to be vastly more. But my car expenses will go from about $400/mo average to about $0/mo. My utilities should be going from about $250/mo to about $100/mo. I’m not sure about TV and internet. Currently, I have U-verse internet bundled with my iPhone. I’ll have to separate those to determine the cost. And I have DirecTV at home, which is about $85/mo. TV and internet have to be bundled where I’m going, because of the building rules.  I’ll have rental income coming in from my house. And I’m getting a raise. Taxes will be different, and probably higher.  I’m not sure how it’ll all work out.

But I am sure it’ll all work out. I do the things. The fact that I’ve started packing already is helping me stay sane. And I’m going to a conference in Florida for the next few days, which will be very cool. I’m seeing a friend there who is also a collaborator. It’s very exciting, even though it’s an insanely bad time to be doing it. Welcome to being a grownup, Dr. 24hours.

And seriously, just the change of address notifications alone drive me mad with anxiety.

But the big sadness is that this means that I will not be in St. Louis for my 5th sober birthday. I’ll be alone in ECC, probably in an empty apartment. I’ll go to meetings, of course. My sponsor will mail me a coin, I think. We’ll figure it out. But I’m going to miss my friends. I’ll miss my homegroups on Wednesday and Sunday. Passing my coin around among friends who are like family. Instead, I’ll be in a strange new city, knowing no one. It sounds lonely. But I know you’ll be here for me, dear reader. I’m not ashamed to admit that I think I’ll need you.