in other news

It's strange, not to mention a bit desolate, sitting in this empty apartment. People have been good about stopping by, some with external hard drives chock full of media to keep me entertained until the big moving day actually arrives. The lack of sensory stimulus in my barren three rooms makes it easy enough to concentrate on finishing my thesis, anyway, but somehow it still isn't even beginning to sink in.

I turned in my introduction and conclusion late last night, which means that for the next week all I have to do is revise and wait, wait and revise. I am not yet conscious of having written a book, another moment of realization that I'm curious to see when it arrives (if you reread that and find it grammatically lacking, SCREW YOU! Which one of us just wrote a BOOK?!)

I miss my neighbs. It was wonderful and important and maybe even necessary to see him surrounded by my furniture in our new apartment -- which is lovely, moreso than we had ever anticipated, and when I'm standing there I really feel that somehow I've finally arrived, in that grownup sense of the word. But so far it's just separation and distance and lack of furniture. He's got the posh apartment and the home goods, and it has not registered that the reason for that is that certain events in my life led us to choose Norfolk, Virginia as a common destination, and that he just happened to get there first.

Surprisingly, so far I've missed relatively few of my material possessions. If you've ever been to my apartment you'll probably remember that it was chock-full of furniture, somewhere between cozy and cramped, and that there was scarcely a vertical surface without something strategically positioned to detract attention from the walls (which are painted a delectable shade called "Oyster"). I now have two TV tables, a desk chair, a suitcase, an air mattress and a loveseat which will soon be turned out to stud on the front lawn. Occasionally I reach for something where it used to be, visualizing for example my favorite pen inside its desk drawer, then realize that the desk, therefore the drawer, therefore the pen, now reside across several state lines. Only then does it hit me that, within a matter of weeks, so will I, and I have a moment of vertigo.

In the meantime, for reasons I can only imagine exist in some unexplored part of my mind, I feel a little as though this is my full reality, as though this is all the stuff I have ever owned, life has always been like this and will continue indefinitely this way. It's not bad, really. I don't feel lost or confused. It's as if I'm going through a breakup without all the pain. It's hard to motivate myself to do domestic stuff like grocery shopping, cooking and laundry; much easier now that it's just me and the dog to be like, oh well, I'll just eat Frankenberry and sit in the dark.

Okay, back to work.