Progress

Pulling these chains around gets so exhausting, but today, at least, they won't be easily shaken off. I shrug my shoulders sometimes, just to try and stretch the droop out. When I lift my arm to grasp something, the weight is enough that I just let it fall again. But, this is the way today is going to be. Too short, too long, too hard to enjoy at all. I'm tired and unhappy.

Change isn't easy. I get excited about it, but my joy follows a progression--and today, as I'm trying to pack up my life, is my day to be genuinely unhappy. Tomorrow, when I actually pull out, I'll be somewhat depressed--but by Saturday, I'll have picked up again, and Sunday, when mom and I pull away from Chattanooga to drive to California, there will be very little but excitement and the inherent love of adventure that is in there somewhere.

Adventures used to be so simple when I was eight or nine. Up early, maybe 6 am, make myself soup for breakfast (I've been strange like that since I was born, basically), pack a sandwhich and a bottle of juice, stick it all in my backpack, and walk down through the fields to the small wood and the creek. Dams to build, tree houses to start, baby rabbits to find. And then home when it started getting dark, to sleep in the same bed I got up out of that morning.

But, if I talk about it much more, two things will happen. First, I'll get depressed now, instead of tomorrow. Second, I won't get anything done. Because I now have...eight hours. And I have not yet begun to pack!

:-D