Reality

We waited all day to get back our signed purchase agreement contract from the seller of our house today.  At four minutes after midnight, just now, our realtor sent word that she at last has the contract. A 12-day clock starts now for us to complete a building inspection, a bug inspection, a sink hole inspection and a survey.

I'm glad about the contract being finalized--thank you, Mercury, direct yesterday at 5:30pm--but I've spent a lot of today feeling anxious and insecure.  The insecurity is kind of ancient but it got aroused this morning during a phone conversation when I resigned from one of my three teaching gigs. I'd planned to do it but not this morning and not over the phone. I was nervous during the brief conversation and developed a sort of amnesia about what I actually said. I think I had a bit of an out-of-body experience.  The upshot is, I think I was quite appropriate and strong on the phone but I didn't know it until the end of the day. I spent the intervening hours contending with insecurity, anxiety and shame. Which even now I'm still feeling the remnants of in my gut.

The whole episode also made a little more real the fact that I'm moving to Florida in the next few months.  I now listen to the news as though I'm already a Florida resident, tuning in to Charlie Crist's every word and indifferent to calls from the DFL.

Bruce and I call our home Cross Creek.  The real Cross Creek is where Florida author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings lived and worked and Bruce loves the area. Now we have our own Cross Creek. Reminding myself of how it feels standing on our land is soothing.  But the reality of moving and all it means--no soup from Cafe Latte, no spur of the moment therapist appointments, no more teaching at the one gig I resigned from--was just there today.  This move isn't academic any more; it's happening.