Boxed

Sitting among several piles of boxes containing what used to be on our shelves and in our closets. Merijn is at the other end of the room, focused, typing to finalize her thesis. She came over from DC last Monday to discuss her work with her professor. She's been typing day and night, no time to play, packing things in the short breaks in between. One more week to get it all done, compiled and printed. She will manage. Tomorrow she flies back to the US again. In only nine days I will follow. I'm looking forward to being there, to having stabilized the circumstance and being able to pick up the work again. It's been less than 10 days since I left my job (with a fabulous farewell quiz by my colleagues), but I already feel uncomfortably disconnected. And now with this mess around me, I wish I had a magic wand, that with one flick I could move all my stuff to the other side of the ocean into a nice home, style it, get rid of the rubbish I don't know what to do with and get me a cool job. My mood has a fever, flipping from despair to excitement. Although it started with a headache (which as well could have been due the decaf, as I ran out of the regular blend and don't want to open a new package), I close this day on a positive wave. It's almost all set. And when I visited Washington DC on reconnaissance mission a month ago, I had a great time and many interesting conversations. I'm thinking of the systems diagram I made at the end of the ISIS Master Class in August: there are far more positive feedback loops.