Growing Up and Moving Out

There's a huge When I Grow Up link-up happening in blogland today and I was really excited to join in.  In typical Betsy fashion, though, my post turned into quite an essay on women in the workplace - by the time I stopped typing last night, I had quoted Kristen van Ogtrop, cited Anne Marie Slaughter's article in The Atlantic, and discussed the Lean In movement, all while exploring the resources currently available to women in my situation.  With all due respect to the readers of the host blogs and those who will be linking up, I don't think the draft I opened up this morning would be appropriate for the link-up even if I were able to finish it today.  Plus, I really want to do the topic justice now that I've let myself get carried away with it, so that post will have to wait to be polished and published.  You can look for it when I return from England, dear readers!

But I have been thinking about growing up a lot recently, inspired less by my wedding than by my impending move.  I've not lived in my parents' house for nearly a decade; I spent three months in Charlottesville after high school, three and a half years in New York City plus eight months in Paris during college, a year in London for grad school, and then (after a 10 month return to DC) another two years in London before finally moving back to Washington and into my parents' house.  I'm good at making new homes and starting over in new cities, but making a new home and starting over in my hometown is really throwing me.

I think maybe I'll feel more settled about it, emotionally, once I've physically moved.  The past six weeks of preparing to move - yeah, that's the sort of thing I don't handle well.  Change is fine; the transition to change is harder for me to deal with.  But the process has solidified as I've packed all my things, which somehow makes the move seem more real than picking out paint colors or buying new furniture.  My closet and dresser are now empty, my bathroom is in neatly-labeled boxes, and all of my kitchen breakables are swathed in bubble wrap.  Next week tomorrow, it's all going to go into a moving truck and I'll have a new home.

I've been really good about not packing things I don't need.  I've got two bags of clothes and another of shoes that will be heading to Goodwill, I've trashed all of the expired toiletries that have been living in cupboards since my last purge, and I'm waiting to choose which tchotchkes to take until I know exactly where I'll put them in the new place.  But some things that are coming with me... well, some things aren't rational.  And I think that's okay, don't you?

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