Lessons Learned

We are officially living in one house now.  The process of moving has been much harder this time than I remember it being the last time we moved.  Maybe it is because we have Josephine, or maybe because I know it will be our last move for a very, very long time.  I suspect, though, it has to do with attitude. 

Last year, when Josephine was about a year old, Taylor and I took her to a wedding in Monterrey.  Josephine had just started walking, and for whatever reason we decided to just go for the wedding and not stay the night.  It was a long 3 hour drive there and 3 hour drive back, and Josephine was not thrilled with car rides over two hours.  To top it off it was raining, and being that it was a wedding for a friend of mine I had a nagging suspicion that Taylor did not want to go (which I was wrong about, but I was feeling guilty for having to drive for such a long time).  I went into the day feeling slightly grumpy about how it was going to go.  I was focussing on how hard it would be in the car, how we were going to deal with our newly walking daughter in a fancy country club, and how I thought Taylor really didn’t want to go to begin with.  I just had a bad attitude about the day. 

Of course, since I was focussing on the negative and ready for disaster, the day turned out to be hectic, aggravating, and not the best day we’ve had.  Despite the beautiful and sincere wedding (I have to say, the ceremony brought tears to my eyes, and I was thrilled to be able to share such a special moment with my dear friend and former coworker), I felt frantic, grumpy, and rigid.  Not the best for bringing a toddler to a new location, where being go with the flow and thinking on your toes really helps.  That experience taught me that if I start the day with a bad attitude, it makes a hard situation even harder.  If I start with no expectations, a positive attitude, and flexibility, my day goes much smoother.  And so it went with our move. 

I reset myself so many times over the course of our move, trying to keep my mood in check, staying positive, and focussed on the job to be done and the light at the end of the tunnel.  Overall, I think I did an OK job of keeping my attitude in check, but I had to constatnly remind myself of the wedding fiasco (so dramatic!) and the lessons I learned.

This path to living my life in a less lazy way is truly going to be difficult.  I know that and accept that.  The lesson I have taken away from the difficulty of the actual moving process has to be how much I can change my outlook and attitude my talking to myself (in my head, of course…I don’t want to look like a crazy lady), and resetting myeself when my resolve starts to stray.  I can’t claim to be even close to perfect with this, since I completely lost my shit a bunch of times the last few weeks, but I am working on it.  And that, my friends, is as much as I can do.  I suppose it’s as much about the journey as the destination…