Frank Herbert
I will confess that I’m a creature of habit. I enjoy familiar places and routines, and tend to resist being dragged out of my comfort zone. We’ve lived in our NJ house for 22 years. I’ve practiced as a psychologist with Summit Psychological Services (little plug there) for almost nine years. You get the picture.
Now everything is in flux. I’m getting a glimpse of a new view, through the windows of a new home (see latest house-in-progress photo, above). I’m winding down with my patients and colleagues, cleaning out the basement. In the past week, I took the extraordinary steps (to me, at least) of applying for Medicare and getting my first iPhone. Oh, brave new world!
Lately, too, I find myself having all sorts of dreams that I know are about retirement and moving. It’s as if my whole being is engaged with the process of change, consciously by day, unconsciously by night. I know I’m alive.
I predict that I will get very cranky as we become surrounded by boxes and my familiar space goes topsy-turvy in the coming weeks. Also, that I will hate having to unpack all those boxes in South Carolina and deal with all the intricacies of getting settled there. But I also predict this: On my birthday next month, in a new place, amidst all the inevitable chaos, I will be very much alive.
And awake.