The stress of moving.

Beautiful weather today. Working from home. Decided to go for a midafternoon run, which I haven't done in awhile. The run was nice, and then when I went to the subway stop to go home, I saw a couple things I hadn't seen in awhile. In the first place, the subway stop itself -- it has been a month or two since I've ridden. But also, a colorful schedule for the Castro Theatre, as well as an ad for a local dance company. A happy reminder that San Francisco is still new, that I haven't done everything and can't do everything.

This summer I'm moving to Columbia, South Carolina. I'm really excited about my job, but confess that I will find it difficult to leave San Francisco. After my run, I recalled a conversation with my sister and her fiance about the stress of moving.

"Yeah, it is really difficult," they told me. (They had moved from Chicago to Boston a couple of years back.) "You don't even know where to buy groceries!" But somehow the conversation failed to comfort me.

I thought more about why moving is stressful, and the interesting thing is that for me, not knowing where to buy groceries actually mitigates the stress. The first time in any grocery store is an adventure. You don't know what's there, and you don't know what to buy. You are forced to engage your senses. But now that I've been to my local Trader Joe's forty times, I typically tune out mentally and just buy all the same stuff I bought last time.

The stress for me is having few friends, few connections to the community, and few things to do on a Friday night. (This has happened every time I've moved.) It's interesting comparing my experience to my sister's. I feel there's something I can learn from it.