I've been here nearly a month now and find that I'm suffering a peculiar kind of lostness. I want to move into the Terwilliger Plaza space, but my pre-Terwilliger life keeps pulling me away. Example: I was to give a brief talk about this blog to the Terwilliger Users Group tomorrow, but the timing conflicted with a meeting with my realtor to move my prior residence onto the market. Example: I wanted to attend a class in an ongoing series about the brain, this one focusing on sleep and dreams, but my work as treasurer of my church overflowed into the class time despite my best efforts. "I really do need to leave by 2:00," I affirmed. Then it was "...by 2:15", then "...by 2:30", and when I finally left at 3:00, I realized I hadn't eaten lunch, and by the time lunch was attended to, the class was over.
If I had moved here from more than a few blocks away, of course, I wouldn't feel this kind of lost, I'd feel another kind -- maybe missing old friends and the rhythms of old networks, maybe looking out at the Oregon weather and missing a different light, different winds on my skin. But I'm in a new place in an old place, and I am suspended as if in mid-leap over a river with my feet definitely having left the near bank but not yet firmly planted on the far bank.
Maybe it's just daylight saving time stamping the wrong numbers on the shape of my waking time. Springing forward is always disorienting.
Or (my anxieties suggest) maybe I made this move just before Alzheimer's started unraveling my mind and what I'm feeling is the first dissolution of who I am. Old age has so many possibilities, very few of them at all appealing. Except, of course, when compared to the alternative.
I suppose there is a desire, and maybe even an expectation, to participate in all that Terwilliger Plaza has to offer. On the other hand, you could look at those offerings as just more things out there to do in Portland as a whole. When you lived in your condo, you probably didn't go out to events on a regular basis and now, just because you live in TP, and such things are so convenient, doesn't mean that you are obligated to do them. Moving into a new space is challenging enough, I would think, without feeling like you have to change your whole life. In fact, it's probably a good idea to leave as much of the rest of your life as you can the same, at least for the time being. My two cents.
ReplyDeleteActually, I'm surprised at the number of Terwilliger Plaza events I actively want to attend. That's part of the frustration: I couldn't get to the brain class, I won't be able to talk about my blog at the users group. You're right that I didn't go out to events while I lived in the condo. I'm a bit surprised at myself wanting to get involved here. It's not the old reclusive me I used to know.
ReplyDeleteWell, then. That sounds like a good problem to have! You'll work it out. Just give yourself a little time.
DeleteI find the spring time change very unsettling too, though gaining an hour in the fall is fine with me.
ReplyDeleteOne of the hardest things about a move is just not knowing where ordinary things are. A hand that can reach in the dark for a light switch can't find it after a move.
A person does get into new routines as time goes by. But I wouldn't want to have to make those adjustments again.
I'm thinking that moving and a time change can make anyone feel a bit discombobulated. Put that together with a dramatically different social calendar and an introvert is gonna need some time to adjust. Doesn't make you extra old, or any less yourself. Plus you have a lot of new people to get to know. Takes energy. Awesome adventure, but adventures can wear a brain out.
ReplyDeleteToo many things happening to get to them all? Seems like gratitude is the operative word.....
ReplyDelete