when I awoke today, suddenly nothing happened/i'm waiting for my real life to begin

forgive me, colin hay, if you do not approve of the wandering musings i've attached to your lyrics.

i'm not sure why the impending move into the city has my stomach tied in knots. it's not the apartment (which is great) nor the location (which could not be better) nor the price (not a steal, of course, but for dc pretty good). it's not that i cannot commit to live in this place for at least a year. it's not the bitch that moving is - that will be largely alleviated by the movers.

i think it might be that i've grown comfortable in this holding pattern in which we've found ourselves the past two years. don't get me wrong, we've spent a lot of time thinking about what next spring will mean for us, and longing for it to hurry up already. we've spent a few afternoons sitting at the belgian place soon to be just around the corner longing for a time when it would be ... just around the corner.

a lot of mornings for a few years, i've awoken to nothing happening. not nothing, really. lots of stuff has happened, lots of things that needed to happen for my real life to begin. you know, the one where i'm not in school, where i have a real job, where we live in the city instead of the 'burbs. that real life.

a few weeks ago, rk scolded me for being so eager for that real life to begin. at the time, i thought she was right ... but also that i wasn't going to stop being eager. now i'm wondering if i'm eager at all. because from here, from the 'burbs, from the safety of school, with none of my real life yet used up, everything is just as i want it to be. it's all out there to be explored, the whole thing. it's like that last harry potter for which i've been clamoring for years - and that has been sitting a third-read on my coffee table since the end of july. or that hour between 6am and 7am on christmas morning when my brother and i were kids - when we'd sit silently on the couch staring at the presents under the tree before we could wake up our parents, imagining all the glorious things that were waiting right in front of us, savoring the not knowing. i love harry potter, i love christmas presents, and i'm sure i'll love that real life once it begins. but i also love the anticipation, those hot summer afternoons spent with b in a neighborhood where we don't - but would love to - live, tossing the idealized version of what it must be like to live there back and forth over duvels or hoegardens. i love that.

moving into the district has long been a touchstone for that real life we've been waiting to begin. and i'm not really sure what to do with that, now that an address and a landlord and a date have been attached.