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.