growing old, giving up

Jenn and I are making some actual progress toward moving up island and it’s starting to feel real, and weird. It’s funny how things seem so fun when they don’t feel real yet, and then when they start to feel real they also become a bit scary.

Even though we are older now and don’t see friends as often as we used to, it’s still a bit sad to think of moving away from so many good people. Yesterday I found myself wondering if Festivus 2019 was the last Festivus we will ever host down here (due to covid, obv). I wonder if other Cowichan friends will host it in the future, and if we will come back down here for it, or if we will start a new tradition with new friends up north.

Work will be weird. I’ve been at the same place for so long that even small workplace changes are big to me, so uprooting and going somewhere totally new with new people and new routines will be nuts. The timing will also be a bit challenging to coordinate so that I’m not commuting either up or down island for months on end, having to stay somewhere grim like a hotel or something in between my shifts and just come home for my days off. That would suck but it’s a likely possibility, at least for a while.

I’ve been looking at our house and property here differently too. Like the fruit trees we planted years ago that are finally starting to look like actual trees and produce a handful of fruit each year — it makes me sad that when we go, we lose the stories behind those trees. The house has some water damage behind the siding on one corner that we were gung-ho on fixing but now that it looks possible we might leave here sooner than we first thought, I have a hard time justifying the substantial repair cost. Even little things, like rearranging furniture and plants, I feel like those things are a little bit pointless now that it’s no longer for the foreseeable future — if we rearrange something and it’s only for a year or something, is it even worth bothering? That kind of thing.

I think all of this is an overreaction, like when you lay in bed at night and things seem scary and bad but then you wake up in the morning and realize the stuff that was worrying you are really non-issues. I think this is probably just a phase, it’s a matter of getting used to the reality of the idea and once that’s done I won’t feel so nervous about the whole thing. At least, that’s what I’m hoping. Imagine if it just gets worse from here, wow. Grim.