If this adventure was anything like the Campbellian monomyth, I would currently be stuck somewhere between the Call to Adventure (first finding out about Leicester) and the Crossing of the First Treshold (going there this weekend), in a stage that keeps shifting from Refusal of the Call (my many, many anxieties) to Supernatural Aid (with people popping up who will be helpful along the way, such as mentors) and back.
I'm now at the point where I should pack my final belongings, as no real adventure can be undertaken without preparations. Even Indiana Jones is shown to take preparations in Raiders (assuming that popping a leather jacket, a whip and a revolver in a suitcase counts as preparation), and as I need much more stuff than Indy, I heed the advice everyone is giving me: pack well. But I find it hard to pack, as I have to distinguish between all my stuff (and I have so much of it, too... I should unclutter) and figure out what's worth bringing and what's not. Who knows what I'm going to need a year from now? It's not even that I attach any material value to my belongings, I just care about my books and my laptop, it's just that some things are so useful. Also, how is one supposed to fit a year's worth of stuff in as few boxes as fit in a medium sized sedan? Or to stuff an entire wardrobe in a suitcase? My father just came up to my room as I was attempting to close my suitcase (by going all Hollywood and sitting on top of it while trying to zip it shut) and complained that I was destroying my suitcase like that and why wasn't I using a bigger one? If I read Leicester's list of what to bring - toiletries (check), crockery (check), dressing gown (check), cutlery (check), towels (check), cooking utensils (check), desk lamp (non-check - haven't decided yet on which one to bring, they're all ugly) - I wonder why they haven't listed the stuff that takes the most space to move, like clothes. It's impossible for me to decide what parts of my wardrobe to bring (and my wardrobe isn't that extensive to begin with) and then I'm still supposed to fit everything in a few boxes? Packing is hell.
Oh, by the way, here's a video of my location: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78tJLrQcv0A
And while packing, there's the matter of anxiety. Packing and preparations allow for just enough inspiration for such gloomy doom but require not enough attention to distract me. So I put on some Nat King Cole or Paul McCartney or Dean Martin and work like that. I had something of an email virus over the weekend, and I've tried resolving it - ran three different antivirus programs - so I hope that matter's settled now too, but it did lead to a whole new set of anxieties, of the social kind - 'oh, those people that received emails from my account from the virus, what are they to think of me?!' - and then, as good anxieties ought to, I could not settle them with reasonable suggestions. So I slept instead, and I think I may have settled the anxieties too.
The rest of this week will also consist of prep work, like de-registering from the municipality. And I'm counting down the days until I reach that next big part of my adventure, the Crossing of the First Threshold, where I get to jump out into the Unknown and experience my Adventure for real. Four days and a half.
But first, I have to finish packing. I wonder whether to bring my pretty copy of Shakespeare...
No comments:
Post a Comment