Week 10: Tale of a bookcase
Dear readers,
We're moving on Monday and it feels like all the stress of moving has concentrated itself in one single object. The Bookcase. I'm staring at it now as I write this. It looks back at me in its half-dismantled state and, if it could talk, it would ask me in a disdainful tone: "How could you do this to me?". I don't know what to reply. I feel guilty, Tom feels guilty. It shouldn't have come to this. Monday the movers are going to come and they're going to break you into pieces, and it will all be over.
Why so much pain over a bookcase? I think what it comes down to after accounting for its sentimental value (it's the same age as Tom's and my relationship) and monetary value (it wasn't cheap) is that it's a problem that I can't solve. Or at least not within the timeframe that I'd like - those of you who followed me through the Udacity project saga might be seeing the beginnings of a pattern here... 😬
So much of this move has been ticking tasks off of a never-ending todo list, and "sell / get rid of bookcase" has been in the backlog for weeks. With only a couple days to go, the list is finally getting shorter and my task-oriented self wants everything done and done well. Preferably a day early too so that Tom and I can bask in that wonderful feeling of having completed something so big.
But the way things are going, the task won't get completed until the day we move and even then there's a risk that the movers take one look at it and say: no way. That happened today when an interested party sent over two movers to pick up the bookcase's main section after she took home the smaller section yesterday.
I'm now confronted with a choice: I can either let the removal of the bookcase consume me and get in the way of doing other moving-related tasks (and there still are many) or I can put it aside. Obviously, we all know what the right thing to do is but it's difficult when it's right there in the living room. After all, it was designed to be the focal point of a room. And never have I appreciated that aspect of it quite as much as today.
Stay tuned for next week's update!
-Alicia