Clay left a very perceptive comment on my last post: “Wow, man, watching that episode the same week or so you leave New Orleans. Heavy. How are you keeping it together?” Barely, Clay, barely.
My childhood journal-keeping and this blog started to sort my rushing thoughts by writing about them and then making lists. So, it’s no surprise that my mantra for this already-busy 2009 is “Breathe, make a plan, execute.” Here goes.
I am leaving my friends, life, and job in New Orleans for my family, new job and new friends (?) up north. This wasn’t real, it was all happening to someone else whom I answered for … until the anxiety dream set in last night after a long, strenuous evening of packing boxes. You know, the one in which you wake up, show up to your new workplace on the first day, everyone stares at you because you aren’t wearing a stitch of clothing but for the navel fuzz and you’re two hours late? Yeah, that one. Great, I can’t shake off this type of dream for days.
The anxiety is a very low-frequency, high-amplitude wave. It comes rarely, but when it’s here, watch out! Only understandable given how much is going on all at once, right? Leaving here means saying goodbye to friends, wrapping up work projects, and handing them over to the right people at the right time, wrapping up Krewe du Vieux work and handing that over to the right people at the right time, going to forward mail and realizing we don’t yet have a mailing address up there, PACKING like mad people and setting stuff aside for Bridge House (parting with things lovingly stored is such sweet sorrow, even if you didn’t look at one of them sideways once in the last five years) and the paperwork and apprehension a new job, in R&D management, entails.
No, no, don’t cry me a river. I have been swimming in nothing but responsibility galore over the last few years, this is only the next adult step. Yet, step back a little and consider how much material, paperwork, and duress modern living entails. Take one more step back and see what a strange bookend this move is to seven lovely, frightening, strange years in the city of New Orleans, as mythical and fraught with peril as Atlantis to the rest of this country. We’re moving back to America, folks, and my dueling senses of culture and civilization quiver in equal parts terror and joy.
There is a profound physical toll, too. While I start work anew on Monday, we have a lot of flying and driving to do, temporary boxes to unpack at various locations, ok let me stop right there before I freak out. Following that, whenever we manage to close on a house (and don’t get me started on banks’ mortgage lending practices in this economy, the wankers!), there’s returning back to New Orleans, the loading of all of our stuff into a moving truck (hoping that everything has made it up there in one piece) and then flies back to Florida for work. Meanwhile, most days, I shuttle my stuff and an overnight bag between the homes of my parents and various relatives, hoping that one day I will have a place to call my own which isn’t located in Mom & Dad’s guest room. Fifteen years after leaving the homestead for FREEDOM!, the prodigal daughter returns. With fifteen years worth of crap in a truck to show for it.
Alternating between the front and back burner of this hot moving stove is work, my career, what I provide to earn a paycheck. Leaving a relatively safe job in the Energy industry – one that I trained for and have made great strides in, at a company that rewards its employees handsomely for performance and where I have made a ton of friends, on a team with colleagues a corporate cog can only dream of – is hard. Starting over at the base of another learning curve, despite that I went to school for this as well, is daunting. At work or at play, I’ve never needed a book to tell me how to win friends and influence people, but I will be the new kid on the block once again. It does make you wonder where your roots are.
With all of this, I have to remember to have no expectations. To go in with an open mind and give everyone and everything a chance, just as I ask them to do for me. Already, folks up there are asking after my costumes and New Orleans cooking, so we’re going to have to host a “gumbo party” (still can’t keep myself from laughing out loud every time I say that phrase) real soon. And, through it all, my friends who gently propel me forward with “I hope those Yankees appreciate what they’re gaining,” “No one I know who left the oil industry regrets it,” “Enjoy your move back north … happy quality of life,” “Deep breath” and “Want me to come give you a real hug?” The world tells me that this, too, will pass. Maybe.
I feel a little better now. Thanks for letting me talk about it.
