The packers are coming tomorrow, and we started to do a little pre-packing packing today. I have to box up all of the electronic stuff, and keep out anything that's going with me in the car, or that I'll need prior to the arrival of our stuff. This makes it all very real.
I realized today that it isn't really the actual move that causes me some amount of stress, but rather the non-concrete idea that I'm more or less homeless for a week or two. It's very weird. I actually have a place to live, know the area, have a job to go to, etc., but I'm rather transient until my stuff catches up.
Meanwhile, the nostalgia here in Seattle is surprisingly intense. I have to say that for most of the last year or so, it really did feel like home for us. The newer place certainly helped, and it feels like we just got in to it. But in the more general sense, everything just feels so familiar. When we were downtown yesterday, I didn't have to look anything up, we just did it. Before work ended, being on campus felt comfortable, as if I had been there for years.
It will be hard for me next week, when I get on to I-90 heading east, but not coming back. Seattle has been good to me. We made a lot of friends here, and it will always be the place where my son was born. The clean air and daily mountain views never stopped being amazing. It was not easy to decide to make this move.
That Cleveland would win in the battle for our hearts and wallets is ironic, since it's the housing market there that made Seattle a difficult place to reach our financial goals. There is no mistaking that the dollars and our social roots on the North Coast make it the right decision, but leaving Seattle is still hard. It feels so much like the end of college, only with a spouse and child. It's similar to the way I view the closest relationships of my life. They might have ended, but they'll always be a part of me.
The thing I can be sure of is that there will be many more adventures ahead of us. If there's one thing I've consistently noticed about life in the last six years, it's that it never ceases to be interesting. Cleveland, for all of the shit I hate about it, has a great deal to like as well. If things go as planned, or at least something like the plan, Cleveland is going to get me where I want to go.
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