Managing Moving Stress

I'm sorry for the long gap between posts (again). I am being very intentional about the demands I put on myself, and each night this week, by the time I got to the end of my to-do list of moving jobs for the day, I forced myself to admit that writing a post was one too many demands for that day.

I had a busy, but positive weekend in Wellington with Jan. I am so thankful that she came with me, because I would have stressed myself out far more if she hadn't, and besides, it was fun to spend the weekend with her, and two evenings at her house with her and her husband, Brian. I have half a mind to give up on Wellington entirely and move in with them and eat Jan's delicious lasagne every night forever.

However, by the time we were actually in Wellington, two of the houses I wanted to look at were already rented. Three more were eliminated on the trip for various reasons, leaving two that we were very interested in renting. That seemed reasonable to us, but we found out early this week that we were too late for both of them, and they were rented to other people.

This may not sound catastrophic to you, and in retrospect, I understand that it is only a minor setback, but at the time, in my exhausted and pressurized state, it felt cataclysmic. I had put so much pressure on myself to find and claim the right house that weekend that when it didn't happen, I felt like we were out of options. Plus, I was furious that I'd spent every moment of every day for a week looking at and trying to book viewings for apartments, not to mention 9 hours of driving and an entire weekend spent looking, and it all came to absolutely nothing. That is just unfair.

I was also strongly pressuring myself to get my car sold, as we will not need two cars in Wellington. We were also showing our current house to get it rented. I was also in full overload mode at work, trying to get a million things done for the restructuring that has just happened there.

Unsurprisingly, I stressed myself right into total insomnia, followed by a horrible sore throat and general sickliness. Turns out, stress is really bad for your health.

I took a sick day on Tuesday, and decided that I needed to get myself under control. I am usually pretty good at handling stress, so I'm not sure how I let myself snowball into such unreasonable levels of urgency and pressure, but I have stopped now. I just won't let myself do it.

So, here is the current situation:

Wellington rentals are tricky, because new ones are advertised all the time, and there are lots of good options, but they seem to be rented almost instantly by people who apparently drove over and signed a lease immediately after reading the advertisement. Living 4.5 hours away makes it difficult for us to do this, but we're learning. The upside of having gone to Wellington last weekend is that I have a better idea now of what areas we might like, of what to look for in the pictures online, and what questions to ask landlords. Also, Jan is now helping me look online, and has found some great places! So I have now been calling and talking to landlords instead of trying to book a viewing, which allows me to be one of the first people to jump on board.

We still don't have a place to rent, but we have a few applications submitted, and I am managing to feel much more optimistic about the whole situation. I have also managed to finally wrap my head around the fact that if we must, we can stay in a hotel and store our things for a week or so while we work out something once we're in Wellington. That is not a terribly tragic worst-case scenario, as it turns out.

J and I are looking for a few minutes at new listings each night, and then I'm following up with ones we both like. We are not allowing ourselves to spend all night doing this, and (possibly more importantly), I am staying relaxed as we do it, and not stressing about whether or not we'll get any one particular place. There will always be more.

J is continuing to be sweet and supportive. He has been calm throughout this entire process, and has faith that it will all work out for the best. I am not used to him being the optimist in our relationship, but I'm so glad to have him here to keep telling me that it's all okay.

I have sold my car, and our current house is now rented, so I can tick two big things off my to-do list. Yay!

I am talking to each of the 40 parents I currently work with individually, telling them that I'm leaving. I find these conversations horribly stressful, because I feel like I make a commitment to parents to be a consistent, supportive person in their children's lives, and so it feels wrong to leave. However, I am feeling confident that this move is the best thing for J and I, and when I communicate that to parents, they are always happy for me. In addition, it feels so good when parents take this conversations as an opportunity to voice their appreciation for me. I love to be valued in my work (as do we all). A few parents who never seem to pay much attention to the effort I put into my job were particularly sad I was leaving and eager to tell me how much they appreciate me, and that means so much to me!

J has organized the movers and booked in early enough to get them just when they wanted them, which is awesome. We had a very hard time with that when we moved here, so that's a relief.

I realize that this is not a very exciting "Kiwi Adventures" post, but I like to keep you updated as to what is really going on. I still have more pictures to share from various fun things that we've done that have been missed in the past, and I'll get to them in good time, without stressing myself out.