Moving

Moving and job hunting are, according to what I’ve read, the two most stressful things you can do. I’ve done a lot of moving and job hunting over the years, and I have to say, I completely agree. We just landed after a two-state move, Pennsylvania to Texas. It’s been almost twenty years since we moved anywhere. We didn’t even move into different apartments in Philly. We stayed in the same city and same apartment for twenty years. Then we moved almost 2,000 miles away.

We’ve done long-distance moves before. We moved from Los Angeles to Rochester, NY; from there to Saratoga Springs, and then down to Philly. And that made three moves in four years. That was stressful. But the longest time in any one place was two years and the shortest was ten months. This has been TWENTY years. Whoa!

Twenty years means you acquire a LOT of stuff. Especially if both of your parents died and you inherited most of their stuff. We did start doing what’s popularly called “Swedish death cleaning” a couple of years ago. That’s where you go through your stuff and start giving it to family members you know want it, or whom you would like to get certain things, or donating or tossing it. We managed a bit of that, but probably not nearly enough.

We’re now in a three-bedroom, two-bath house from a two-bedroom, one-bath apartment. We have almost double the space. That’s a bit heady. I don’t want to completely expand to fill available space as I’ve done before. I do want to be comfortable, and moved in. But, we’re planning on buying a place in the next year or so and so I also don’t want to buy things that fit this place specifically. Anything I buy now (chairs, etc.) are going to be purchased with an eye to how they work in a more general fashion for an unknown future house.

But all that is for the future. Right now, I’m exhausted, my feet hurt, and I don’t have a table to eat on. We did bring camp chairs, and I had an idea that maybe we could get a table for the patio, that we could use inside until our stuff came. Of course, it’s winter, so nobody is selling patio furniture right now. Bummer.

Our stuff will get put on a truck tomorrow, and then the truck will head out after that. Hopefully. Which means, we’re camping out until at least the middle of next week.

All of that whinging aside, I am very happy to be here. We went shopping today for groceries and other things and I kept having to tell myself that I live here now. It was 75 degrees or so, and sunny. This is the kind of weather I love. I’m okay with cold weather, but the last couple of days in Philly, the wind was cutting, and it was generally damp and cold. Today, I’m wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt and I opened the sunroof on the car while we were out. I have windows open in the house. Woot!

There are a number of friends in Philly who I will miss a great deal. That also makes moving stressful. It’s going to be several months if not longer before we see some of them again and that’s something that makes me a bit sad. I know we’ll keep in touch online, but it’s not the same thing as seeing them in person.

So I have to say that while moving is indeed stressful, it is a stress that is worth it. Especially if the move is something you’ve worked toward for a number of years.

But this is an adventure and for adventure you have to look forward not backward.

The plan now is to get back to writing and finish up Book #3 in Academic Magic as soon as possible and get it out to beta readers. Then I’m working on a series for The Academy Arcane which has a couple of short stories (in Fantastic Schools Vols. 2 and 3, and Adventure Stories for Young Readers) in the world now, but which I want to develop into a series. I’ve also got the Cursebreaker books waiting in the wings.

I do have a story in the just-released anthology Can’t Go Home Again, edited by Cedar Sanderson and published by Sanderly Studios. I’m very grateful and proud to have been included in this anthology and I’m proud of the story I wrote. It’s not my usual, but I think it’s good.

Now that we’ve done the move (even if all our stuff has yet to arrive), I feel like I can settle down and get back to writing. The goal is to get to at least 10,000 words a day. I’m going to build up to that, but I hope that by January, I’m there. It’s the only way to get things out that I want to publish, and I really have no excuse for not gluing my butt to the chair and writing.

In addition to the story writing, my plan is to write regularly for this blog. I am also going to be putting up more book reviews. I am very flattered that my book reviews have been picked up by the National Science Fiction organization and appear in their book review edition. I definitely need to get more of those out. Writing book reviews is a very good way to make myself pay attention to the “how to write” things as well as the “how NOT to write.”

Okay. I’m fading fast. This is the beginning of a new adventure, and I am very excited. But now I’m going to bed. The internet guy is coming first thing tomorrow morning.

Good night, all!

Image by Nina Garman from Pixabay