Instead of my anxious brain getting stuck in overdrive and making it hard for me to go to sleep at night, as is its wont, today it decided to wake me up early and keep me that way. Topic of the day: stuff. Specifically what stuff to take out to Idaho for the winter when we’re not really moving yet exactly but kinda sorta are. The house isn’t sold, so we’re not taking/getting rid of everything that’s left here and in the storage unit we rented to get stuff out of the way for staging the house. That will come later. Now, we just need to figure out what subset of things we’ll want for the ski season. Mr. Karen made a list of things he thought we should take when we head out this month, and we discussed that list, so it might seem there’s nothing to worry about. Just pack up the stuff on the list and go. But no, that’s not how my brain works. We can worry about the list itself, of course. Are things on it that shouldn’t be? Are things that should be on it not there? It helps if one doesn’t actually look at the list while doing this part of the worrying, as that adds a delicious note of uncertainty.
But let’s assume the list is okay. Are we done worrying? Of course not. We can move on to the details. The list can’t have every individual item on it, so there’s plenty of room to screw up and leave things behind that I’ll want later or bring things I won’t wear or use. It’s like vacation packing anxiety but ramped up because we won’t be coming back for a long while (possibly? probably?) and my usual “I can buy what I need there” mantra that I use to calm myself when packing for a trip doesn’t work as well now that we’re on our retirement budget.
Gah. I need to stop this. I’m going out there to ski. Most all of my ski stuff is already in Idaho. I have some non-ski clothes there, too. So even if I show up with only the luggage I needed for the drive out, I can ski. If I have to wear the same five or six outfits off the slopes all winter, so be it. We have a washing machine. Eventually all my clothes and I will be in the same place again. I will survive if I don’t choose the optimal subset of t-shirts to have with me for one season.
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December 7th, 2015 at 5:51 am
I call that wide-awake worrying habit “stewing.” Sometimes I can turn off the burner, but other times I have to cook it until it’s time to get up.