The Move

In the middle of my bedroom stand four boxes. Books, movies, a P-51, and a Christen Eagle and Cessna 170 are all in boxes with “AVIALL” written in blue italics. FRAGILE is scrawled across the box with the Eagle and Cessna to remind myself of how angry I’ll be if, upon unpacking, the biplane is no longer a biplane and the Cessna became the world’s first retractable gear antique Cessna model. I’m moving. I’m not happy.

I once read that moving is the most traumatic experience a person can go through next to the death of a loved one and a divorce. Seeing as how all my closest friends and relatives maintain their pulses and I am as of not yet wed, this is the worst thing that I can do to myself. So why go through with it? The simple, irrefutable argument to move is that it is time. When I moved to Rhode Island a smidge over four years ago I took a significant paycut while assuming a 100% increase in my total student loan debt. I could not afford rent. I continued to not be able to afford rent for the next four years.

I should be happy but as I said 129 words ago, I’m not. In addition to realizing how pointless it is to own books and movies, I now have to pay the previously unpayable apartment rent. This would once more be fine if I did not have ambition. If you have been reading this blog for more than 30 seconds you will know that somewhere in me lies a substantial amount of ambition. Trying to maintain this ambition while also dealing with a growing sense of reality makes for an uncomfortable existence, like eating a king size Charlestown Chew in front of your dentist.

I could be pouring a ton of money into my flying instead of moving out. I’m 29 years old. I remember being in my early 20’s looking at people that were 29 that still lived at home and thinking “oh please don’t let that be me.” Fast forward a few years and bam, here I am. But, its time to go. I found a place that doesn’t kill my flying budget while still satisfying my need to be on my own…with a roommate. My friend Mark was about to lose his roommate. The price is right, the roommate is right, and the timing was right. Yes, was. Why only was? I realize I ask lots of these questions when I write but if you can show me a better segue I will give you $0.01. It was good timing until Sunday night when I realized that I will have student loan payments until 2024. I will be 43 years old and still paying off student loan debt. My kids had better be amazingly smart or be able to throw a baseball 115mph or dance a mean ballet.

Once I move, I’m not moving back home ever. Not unless I get into some terrible accident that leaves me in a constant vegetative state (for the record, pull the plug on me. I’ll come back as a bird or a falcon or something cool.) This means that starting next month I will forever and forever have a housing payment and a student loan payment. I am suffocated, drowning in my own personal finances. How can a dream that I’ve had since I was 10 be shoved into a corner like this? For awhile the answer was blissful ignorance but I cannot hide behind that anymore. Nobody puts baby in the corner and we sure as hell don’t put flying in the corner either. I’m not about to start making excuses for myself. I will have to work harder and smarter in this pursuit from here on out.

Until I figure out how to do that, I will continue to bathe in stress. No joke, between work, moving, and money stuff I am a walking bag of nerves. Has anyone ever got so stressed out that their face starts twitching? No? Just me? GREAT. It is only temporary of course so we will be back to normal in a week or two. Until next time folks, keep the dirty side up, hug the people you love and eat plenty of chocolate.

(See? Even writing this made me a feel a bit better.)