Short-Timers' Syndrome.
I think you're already leaving
feels like your hand is on the door
I thought this place was an empire
but now I'm relaxed - i can't be sure
I was standing at my desk yesterday, facing the windows while I was working on some copying, and I glanced up to do something else and was caught by the fascinating interplay of shadow and light dancing on the steep red slopes of the Town Hall roof and the vibrant green of the trees that enclose the neighborhood behind the Town Hall and beyond the serpentine stretch of 81 between them. It struck me, as I stood there looking out at this modern pastoral scene, that I will miss Syracuse very much when we leave it, and that, much as I don't want to leave in some ways, my heart has already accepted that our time here is about finished. At best, there's probably a year left here; having that knowledge in the back of my mind is much like having a toothache. Most of the time you can ignore it just fine, but when it hurts, it -really- hurts.
I have the annoying tendency to put down little roots whenever I live in a place for any length of time. The longer I live in a certain local, the more little roots I tend to put down. They sting a lot when I have to move, and I feel very out-of-place and transplanted when I DO move to new locations. I've moved more in the past 10 years than I had ever moved in my life, and frankly, I death-hate the entire process of moving. Few things wrack my nerves like that.
But I digress.
The reason that I say I have short-timers' syndrome is because I find myself becoming very apathetic about the activities involved with my life. The druid group, for whom I perform webmistress services, has been pretty much purged from my life. I am willing and happy to continue to perform as their webmistress, but that's about as far as I'm interested in the group, anymore. I really needed to simplify my life, and frankly, that group was the first to go. I love them, I think they have a lot to offer most people, and I have enjoyed the time I spent with them... but I'm done.
Much the same can be said of the other things in my life. My friends here, which are admittedly few, I will miss very much but I can already feel myself withdrawing from that, as well. Perhaps that is the reason that I kept in touch with fair number of the Blacksburg crowd for a while; the roots never really healed until I was 2 years into living in New York.
And now, we are contemplating moving to yet another new state for me. Moving to new locales within a state is one thing; moving to an entirely different state is another. It's a pain in the ass.
However, we are up for grabs for three major contenders right now: NC, VA, and CA. I'm pulling for NC, personally (odd, isn't it, when I'm a native Virginian?) and the closer we are to the center of the state in NC, the happier I think I will be. I wouldn't mind Greensboro or Raleigh or Charlotte, though.
But as much as I am looking forward to new things, the old things have the benefit of familiarity and a small security... comforting, when the economic and job markets are so abysmal. In that year's time, though, we will be mostly out of debt (a nice thing!), and financially able to do some of the things we've been putting off for several years, like buying a new car and/or a house.
Changes are inevitable; the present moment has the bittersweetness of last chances when every moment can seem like the Kodak moment you want to snap and keep in your internal picture album. It's sometimes hard to go about the mundane routines of life when you feel like time, places, and people are sliding through your fingers like the fluffy seeds of a dandelion on the wind.
feels like your hand is on the door
I thought this place was an empire
but now I'm relaxed - i can't be sure
I was standing at my desk yesterday, facing the windows while I was working on some copying, and I glanced up to do something else and was caught by the fascinating interplay of shadow and light dancing on the steep red slopes of the Town Hall roof and the vibrant green of the trees that enclose the neighborhood behind the Town Hall and beyond the serpentine stretch of 81 between them. It struck me, as I stood there looking out at this modern pastoral scene, that I will miss Syracuse very much when we leave it, and that, much as I don't want to leave in some ways, my heart has already accepted that our time here is about finished. At best, there's probably a year left here; having that knowledge in the back of my mind is much like having a toothache. Most of the time you can ignore it just fine, but when it hurts, it -really- hurts.
I have the annoying tendency to put down little roots whenever I live in a place for any length of time. The longer I live in a certain local, the more little roots I tend to put down. They sting a lot when I have to move, and I feel very out-of-place and transplanted when I DO move to new locations. I've moved more in the past 10 years than I had ever moved in my life, and frankly, I death-hate the entire process of moving. Few things wrack my nerves like that.
But I digress.
The reason that I say I have short-timers' syndrome is because I find myself becoming very apathetic about the activities involved with my life. The druid group, for whom I perform webmistress services, has been pretty much purged from my life. I am willing and happy to continue to perform as their webmistress, but that's about as far as I'm interested in the group, anymore. I really needed to simplify my life, and frankly, that group was the first to go. I love them, I think they have a lot to offer most people, and I have enjoyed the time I spent with them... but I'm done.
Much the same can be said of the other things in my life. My friends here, which are admittedly few, I will miss very much but I can already feel myself withdrawing from that, as well. Perhaps that is the reason that I kept in touch with fair number of the Blacksburg crowd for a while; the roots never really healed until I was 2 years into living in New York.
And now, we are contemplating moving to yet another new state for me. Moving to new locales within a state is one thing; moving to an entirely different state is another. It's a pain in the ass.
However, we are up for grabs for three major contenders right now: NC, VA, and CA. I'm pulling for NC, personally (odd, isn't it, when I'm a native Virginian?) and the closer we are to the center of the state in NC, the happier I think I will be. I wouldn't mind Greensboro or Raleigh or Charlotte, though.
But as much as I am looking forward to new things, the old things have the benefit of familiarity and a small security... comforting, when the economic and job markets are so abysmal. In that year's time, though, we will be mostly out of debt (a nice thing!), and financially able to do some of the things we've been putting off for several years, like buying a new car and/or a house.
Changes are inevitable; the present moment has the bittersweetness of last chances when every moment can seem like the Kodak moment you want to snap and keep in your internal picture album. It's sometimes hard to go about the mundane routines of life when you feel like time, places, and people are sliding through your fingers like the fluffy seeds of a dandelion on the wind.