Pack your mind and the rest will follow

Kate and I moved up here in the fall of 2004, and made a deal with each other: we’d stay for a minimum of 2 years. Kate really wanted to spend a decent length of time at this, her first job as a full-fledged NNP, and I was happy to commit to it – we’ve got friends and family here in the Upper Valley, and returning to rural life while enjoying the benefits of twice-monthly trips back to Boston seemed like it would work very nicely. And it has, undeniably. Kate loves her job, I love the farmers’ market and having friends and neighbors and neighbors and friends in ever-widening concentric circles…

But then on bad days, Kate has to work some truly absurd hours, and I’ve gotten restless about my job despite the awesome perqs, and here we are, coming up on Fall 2006, when we said we’d decide what our next steps would be: whether to recommit to sticking around or to mosey on to any one of a number of fantasy possibilities like Chicago or San Francisco or Madison or New Zealand (okay, truthfully, spending a single year in NZ is my fantasy and not Kate’s, but she’s kind enough to play along, a little). Do we start having a family? Do I go to graduate school? We’ve told ourselves that we’ll decide by summer what we’re doing next.

All of which is to provide the context which makes this morning’s dreams fairly transparent. Just before Kate’s alarm went off, I woke up out of a dream in which I was preparing to go to India with my college roommate, Ted, and somewhat frantically trying to make sure I’d packed everything I needed and nothing I didn’t. Once Kate started her work-morning routine, I fell back asleep into a dream about packing and preparing to go back to Nepal with Cana (another old roommate), and fretting over whether I’d brought the right hiking boots and thermal layers. After Kate came back to give me a kiss goodbye, I dozed briefly and dreamed of trying to get everything Chad and I needed together for a trip to … I don’t recall where, but far away, and the tenor of that dream was the same as the other two: anxiety that we/I hadn’t prepared enough, that we weren’t ready, that we’d get to where we were going and find ourselves in trouble.

So apparently there’s a little rummaging and rustling going on in my skull.