Moving and moving forward

As most of you know, I am moving next month to Las Vegas and will be commuting once a week to L.A. for a class at the Red Engine School.  If you've been following my blog you'll know that it was a long process to come to the decision to move and it wasn't taken on lightly.  For about a year I've been weighing my options and trying to figure out a way to make everything I wanted work together.  Trust me, this was no over night decision here.

The prospect of moving is always exciting.  There are new things waiting, a whole sort of clean slate kind of feeling to look forward to.  I can't wait to see our new apartment, our new neighborhood, to smell the new air and feel a different sun shining down on me (sunshine feels different in different places to me).  I am looking forward to my classes and what I'll be learning.  I know I do my best when I am in a structured environment rather than on my own and this is stuff I'll want to learn. 

Of course there is the other side of this:  The nerve-wracking, scary, stressful side.  Its the packing and planning and lifting and worry.  The cost, the labor, the cars, the pain, the dog, the physical, the unpacking, the leaving...  The leaving... again.

I am a nester - meaning that I get comfortable just about where ever I am.  Whether its been the house in New Jersey, the apartment in New York City, or my first place on my own in Pennsylvania, I settled in and settled down and into the area I was in.  I was a regular at places, enough so that people knew my face, my 'usual orders' or my name.  People waved to me and asked me about how my day was, how my dog was doing and how work was going.  Moving to Las Vegas won't change that.  I'll get my nest settled and will get comfortable for the time I am there - of this, I'm pretty sure of.

Image does not actually represent me... But something like this.

I have been blessed with meeting a lot of amazing people.  The friends who I still consider my closest and dearest were made in college (This isn't a knock against the friends I made before or after this time - but the feelings of friendship during college are different, perhaps because we are all facing the gauntlet of challenges as we pass from child to adult).  Moving from New York back to New Jersey wasn't terrible because I was still able to see my friends frequently enough, though I missed hopping on a subway and riding right out to them or having them drop by my apartment.  Then I moved to Pennsylvania and the distance was greater, but still, I was able to see them.  During my time in PA, I met some more people when I worked at Barnes & Nobles there - great people who made me realize I could make more friends than the close group of ones I had previously.  Then I moved again and had to leave those people behind.  I moved here to Kansas and made more friends...  More people I enjoyed being with and was feeling rather grateful to meet.  Then of course, are all the friends I have made by going to conventions over the years!

Usually my friends are more active than this.

See?  Full of action packed action!

Lots of action happening...

Bubble blowing is action!

B&N Willowgrove: You'd buy books from these people... right?

B&N Overland Park: In person they do not have demon eyes.

Add to all that my brother and his family who live here in Kansas.  In the few years I have been here, I have been very blessed to get to know five amazing kids better.  I've watched my niece grow into a really awesome young lady and I can't wait to see the woman she will become.  My two older nephews seemed to change from boys to young men overnight - scary but incredible.  The third nephew is growing into his own, becoming his own person with a great sense of humor.  And of course there is the youngest...  I met him as a baby and now he is a little boy who is just as magical and beautiful as can be.  I've reconnected with my brother in a way that I don't think would have happened if I hadn't been here.

Now I am moving again and it feels like I am putting more distance between myself and my dear friends in New York, my friends in Pennsylvania, my convention friends, my family and new friends in Kansas.  Sometimes it feels as if I am leaving small pieces of myself behind, ones that I reach for but won't reconnect with.  While things like Facebook are great for keeping in touch, it isn't the same as hanging out at someone's house having coffee or talking till 2 a.m., or going to a bar for a beer and laughing, or going to a movie to share the experience.

I will, of course, do my best to stay in touch, but I know myself enough to know that I will fall short of my desires - life has a way of doing that.  While my intentions are grand, the effort and time and opportunity, may not come together.

Obviously, this move is important to me.  While I dread the moving and relocating and readjusting, I know that I have to do this to achieve my goals.  I know that my friends and family, being the amazing people they are, would not want me to stay if it meant I wouldn't do that.  I don't think any of them would want me to stay back.  So instead of thinking of leaving myself behind, or leaving them, I will try to think of them as waves in the ocean, lifting, raising and pushing me towards the shore where my goals are.

All the blood, sweat and tears are there, but I have to remember that I am not only moving, but moving forward.  We go through the difficulties and the pain to reach the other end, cleansed by the fire so to speak.  With the thoughts and good wishes of my friends and family, I know I can make it through the difficult times and come out the other end, ready and able to take on the challenges:  Able to move forward with the ocean of my loved ones roaring and cheering behind me.  For that I am grateful and it is what I have to keep in mind.  Moving and moving forward doesn't have to mean, leaving and leaving behind.


DISCLAIMER: If I do not have a picture of you up, please don't take offense.  I have TONS of photos of friends and loved ones and this blog would go on forever if I had put them ALL up.  There are many more people not in the pictures who I think of as dear close friends and loved ones.