because nothing goes better with madness than more madness

The March madness is trudging along, well, more like limping along, since I have still not managed to accomplish all 5 things in one day yet. But I will carry on and keep trying.

There have been ulterior motives to the madness:
1)I am going back to Australia for a few months at the end of April.
2)The lease to my increasingly expensive apartment expires at the end of April as well.

So, I am moving my stuff from the apartment into storage while I am away and when I return I will live like a wanderer in a friend's house for a few weeks while I search for a new home.

The prospect of moving and going through the incipient purge of Unecessary/Unused/Uncomfortable possessions fits well with my recent shake-ups and realizations that it's Time To Graduate and time to Move Along in My Life. I need some change, and I need it soon.

Mark Morford said it very well in his column today:

It's about letting the spirit evolve. It's about recognizing the need, that urgent, antsy sort of restlessness in the body, and honoring the feeling to move and shimmy and snap out of old patterns and beliefs and this is true even if it only involves rearranging the furniture or buying a big new television or throwing away all your old underwear or cleaning out the sex-toy box. It is, in a word, mandatory.

And I am going to have to do all of those things (well, except buy a new TV).

The last time I moved was after a difficult breakup that caused me to rethink my ideas about friendship, love and how I valued myself. I didn't do a good job of dealing with my pain, and my support system couldn't quite deal with the strain of it all. My apartment made me feel stagnant, stuck in memories of past relationships and friendships. As the end of that lease approached, I was trying to meet new people to replace the friends I had alienated lost during the breakup, getting involved in new activities, and trying to engage in some all around personal growth. My new place was the new stage in my life, and it was fabulous.

And now, the stagnancy has returned. Not in my personal life (well, maybe in my dating or lack of dating life, but that's another post), but in my professional life. Money is the main reason why I need to move, but I think that getting my stuff and space in order will help me get my life in order. Moving house is a big change, but graduating is bigger change. If I can handle the big change, I should also be able to handle the bigger one. Both are simultaneously exciting and terrifying, and both are definitely mandatory.