Last Day at Work

Today's such a bittersweet day. I have a job to go to in Albany, I start a week from Thursday. I have an apartment and a boyfriend. Last night I discovered one mover thinks he can move my stuff for $1400. (Cha-ching!) That is if I keep some furniture which I'm having a hard time unloading. I saw an ad on Craigslist for a junk mover to come get the stuff that I don't want to take. They see all the stuff as an investment and are willing to take it all free of charge.

I really do want to divest myself of all of it, actually. My cat's freaking out though. I think he understands my phone conversations and has been snarly of late because he knows I'm talking about "his" China closet, file cabinet, dresser and desk. Maybe I'm wrong.

I feel excited and scared--change does this to me. I want it and yet, in these moments I wish it was all over and done with. I have difficult choices to make, and the thing is I have to remember I'm not alone. Tonight at work, I received a wonderful gift from my coworkers. They took up a collection for my move. I'm moved to tears and beyond. All the cash I can get will come in handy for this transition. I'm in one of those hard places where I feel like it's not going to be enough, and I've created my own Perfect Storm.

Still not sure what the best option is for getting my stuff up there. I threw a quick tarot reading for the various choices. 5 Cups for going with the quoted mover, but without the stuff. 4 Swords for a Craigslist mover. 3 Disks for UPS and The Devil for the P.O. (I find that last one Hi-LARious!) Seems like Craigslist or UPS, though UPS will be more expensive than the PO. Craigslist seems like the best approach, provided I can get the right guy.

Seeing the Devil in my reading though, lightened my mood. ("Lightened my move" I typed first. Yeah, baby!) He reminds me to keep it light, ironically. Devil's Play is what the Voyager calls the card. Helpful. These 78 friends of mine do offer comfort every once in awhile. And the card for the day is the Queen of Cups. Counselor. So hopefully another answer lies with my AA meeting later this morning. (I drew a card for that--10 Wands. Burden. Perhaps to be lifted? I saw the owl on the card, see and feel appropriate guidance through difficulties.)

I can be trusted.

Recovering from Conservatism?

I think there's another way to deal with this:

http://www.michigandaily.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/09/26/4337873e6380f

In addition to pointing out how "coming out" as conservative is inappropriate, it might be a good strategy to shift the focus toward its positive aspect by of truth-telling by pointing out the more accurate comparison of conservatism with alcoholism. "Ann C., that is so wonderful that you have admitted it. I am so relieved that you understand what you're wrestling with. How did you figure out you were powerless over rage and that your life had become unmanageable?"

Two more days left

It's a bittersweet moment to leave a job. I won't really miss the work at all. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I'm just headed to more of the same, but maybe with a different kind of pressure. I'll be leaving a rather cushy gig as a weekend overnight word processor for a more stressful job as a 9-5 Monday-Friday legal secretary--though it is in Albany and not NYC. I'll find out how busy the job is when I get there, and who knows? I might love it, I might hate it, I might have all sorts of feelings until I get into a groove with it.

Still, the feelings I'm having about leaving the weekend/overnight gig are as intense as I would expect to have, given that I've been at this job longer than I've been at any other one. Before this, the longest I held a job was 3 years 10 months or so, and that was the most fun job I've ever held, as a book indexer. It just didn't pay well--publishing just doesn't.

I had feelings about leaving that job as well, and actually almost every job I've left there's been some sadness. People move on, it's part of the postmodern condition I guess. Some people move on much more frequently than I have. I started this job 6 years ago. Interesting that the longest duration would be at a job that has the oddest hours possible, and at a place where day shift would be the last shift I'd want to work. "Place"? Really I meant "field."

I'm going to miss the people I have had the privilege to work with over the past 6 years. I do hope to stay in contact with these people. I have said that in the past and not meant it, but I do mean it now. These folks have become a part of me, and it is a sorrowful moment to leave them and go on to brighter, bigger things. I'm deepening my relationship to nature--that will make it bright, bold and beautiful at the onset. I'm also saying yes to the earthly relationship to my writing as regards the notion of place. I'm impelled to relocate to Albany--this is a movement from my soul, from my own unusual daemon. People for whom New York City is "IT" would never understand this idea. I myself used to be of that persuasion, but I see that staying here has been slowly killing me. It's time I sashayed up to a more verdant and lush possibility.

So I'll relish these last two days of overtime--yeah, that's kind of confusing that word--and then I'll trust the universe to provide.

Card of the day: The Emperor.

Wow! Two days in a row!

Perhaps it's because of my impending move, but I do have a desire to post another entry into this weblog. Because last night I had a rather dislocating experience, literally.

I was walking through Tompkins Square Park headed toward a cafe on Avenue A where I thought I'd get a cuppa and sit down and write for a minute. I got to the door of the place, when I was struck deeply by the notion that this was the very last thing I needed to be doing right then. I stood in the doorway for a moment, then turned and walked back out and then the thought washed over me like a wave:

You do not belong here anymore. New York is no longer "home."

I did feel a bit dizzy and disoriented all of a sudden. This was a "universe" moment, and I had been having them since I had awoken at 5 p.m. I had a "universe" moment when I was writing in my journal about the fact that this moving company my boyfriend recommended quoted me $192/hour for moving my worth-approximately $800 stuff upstate, and musing about whether it wasn't time to let pretty much all of my stuff go, when I get a knock on the door by next-door neighbor, asking me to help her with an art project. We got to talking and I asked if she knew of anyone who was a decent (and relatively inexpensive) mover out there, and she suggested "if it was just me, I'd let it all go." And really, I don't have a lot. I think I'll keep the kitchen table and chairs, and the futon and frame and that's it.

I had another Universe moment when I realized my phone had been disconnected early. I asked the provider to disconnect the phone on 9/30 but they did so a week before that. I am starting to understand that I'm not New York's kiddo anymore, I'm in the hallway. I've decided that's for the best.

In any case, it seems that all of this led to the moment outside that cafe, and the feeling like I'm standing inside the Void. All told, that's exactly where I am. I called my best friend, and we chatted about it, but I was needing a bit of listening-to. I really don't know what awaits me in Albany. I have a pretty good idea, work-wise, but I don't know about the rest of it. What exactly will I be called to do? How will it relate with all the other stuff swirling about us all? Do I have a meaningful role to play in helping what is salvageable from this demented civilization to continue on and thrive? And will my writing benefit from all this? I do know that Albany will provide me with a more chthonic connection to the land which my writing has been hungering after. Other than that, I am taking so much on faith, it boggles my mind.

Yowza!

Crazy in/crazy out

Amidst all the tumult and change going on, I feel a compulsion to blog a little this morning. It's 4:45 as I start to type this, at my cubicle. I am making so many huge switches with this move upstate to New York's fifth or sixth largest city. (Or maybe eighth or ninth for all I know.) I'm switching from a night job to a day job, from working in the basement to working on the sixth floor of a building that sits right next to the Hudson River, AND conversely, I'm moving from the fourth floor of a building to a garden-level apartment WITH AN ACTUAL GARDEN!!! (Can you say "herb blogging," anyone?)

I have been reading various blogs, such as Ran Prieur, Tim Boucher, Pam's House Blend, Americablog, etc. The news is so odd. I'm feeling like so much of it's toxic. And yet, as I make this move, I have this odd hope and faith that things are unfolding in a beautiful and momentous manner. Perhaps there will be a big ol' Hurricane to barrel up into the Northeast. (After all, Hurricane Maria did hit Norway, eventually. One person died.) Perhaps the PNAC folks will jumpstart their pet nucular war project and turn the world into a fiery furnace. For some reason, I'm keeping my thoughts on a huge-ass divine intervention of some sort.

There's a lot of craziness in the world, both on the ground and in the ether. I have no idea what's going to happen, but I'm still optimistic and hopeful that there are some people out there, especially in the Albany/Troy area who will have enough awareness and acceptance in their vistas to reach out and grab my hand once I extend it to give/receive help. We are heading into a time where we will need to find people to give our protection to, the same people who will give us their protection and mutual blessing.

May we all find those people and soon.

The Gods & Goddesses Moving Heaven & Earth

I'm moving at last! O Albany, my new home town. I'm excited and terrified about the changes that I am welcoming into my life. They are coming after a long period of gestation and now, here I am nearing conception point. Another bend in the road, as my former boss Sydney Cohen said in a recent phone call. Life just never ceases to amaze me.

I'll be working at a new firm, living in a new apartment, keeping the same boyfriend but I'll be a lot closer than the 3 hour bus-ride via Adirondack Trailways. Wonder if I'll see him more or only just as much as I have been.

So, let me say thank you to New York City for having been a great host to my journey and to have been an alembic for the massive changes I've undergone in the past 5 years. Thank you to the folks at the present firm for having been supportive through these amazing years. And thank you to the spirits of the cities of the Capital District (esp. Albany & Troy, but also Menands, Colonie, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Schenectady, Loudonville, Saratoga Springs, Lake George, Greenwich, Rensselaer, Defreestville, Latham, Voorheesville, Ballston Spa, Averill Park, Brunswick, New Scotland and others) for working to make this move a reality. All I'm doing is getting into alignment with Mother Earth and whatever chthonic structures are pulling me toward this special tellurian place.

Yea! Onward!

In the throes of it

I'm moving. Still don't have an apartment or a job upstate yet, but I made the decision to abandon New York City for the beauty and lushness that is upstate. I will be looking at apartments in Troy and Albany this week, and I hope also to have an interview or two up there as well. But it's not easy to make this shift. There are a lot of factors to be factored in.

I need to take into account my finances and what I owe. The fact that I have graduate student loans weighs heavily on my heart. All told, I'm about $65K in debt, with the loan ($53K) and the remainder in credit cards. All this, coupled with the expected rise in gas/oil prices and the also expected rough winter ahead, I'm wondering what I'm pushing myself into.

Another factor is my boyfriend. I need to include him in my decision making, but in the end I still need to be the one to make the decisions about the job and the apartment. My guides are telling me that I need to focus on an area west-southwest of the capital itself, particularly focusing on Madison, the "zero" street of Albany. (The line where North Main stops and South Main begins, and vice versa.) It'd be like living on 5th Avenue in the City or Broadway in Denver. So I'm curious about that, but my guides say they have a place all picked out for me.

They've also said that the job they scope out won't be one I particularly enjoy but that "if I play my cards right" it'll be the only job I will have before I move into the line(s) of work that my soul are calling me into.

This move is really one of a plunge into faith and also into my fate, whatever it is. On some level I'm in pursuit of an Epicurean life as Thomas Moore defines it in his books. What I take that to be is a fuller, more ensouled and spirited life that is grounded in the reality of this world. That finds the sacred in the ordinary. And indeed, the sacred is inside the most ordinary of objects, a rock, a paper clip, even a plastic bottle.

There's a lot going on in my life right now, and I'm taking the next right step. For example, I confessed my worries about finances and talked with my mother, and she broke the ice with my uncle and found out how much of a loan I could hit him up for. So he'll be sending me some money to help out. That will be a huge relief.

I have lots of concerns right now, but I'll handle them one at a time. They are what they are. I'm moving through them.

And at the end of it, I'll have a nicer life. I'm pretty sure that the Capital District will amplify certain trends and right-size others. It doesn't feel like the endpoint. But it's the necessary next step.