late night moving panic.

In many ways I am grateful for having a year off of school before heading back into the grad school gauntlet. However, the hardest thing has been knowing exactly what I am going to do when I am done and yet not being able to do much planning. I am, of course, an excellent planner (although notably less excellent on the following through part) but it is just too early to plan many parts of the move. I occasionally peruse Craigslist in hopes of finding an apartment gem but it generally just induces panic. My stress often manifests into dreams and moving is no exception; I often dream that I forgot to ever find a place to live and end up trying to take everything I own to each of my classes.

The worst part of finding a place to live in Atlanta is that everything costs approximately 1 billion dollars per square inch. That might be an exaggeration but compared to the small Iowa college town I have called home for eight years it is startling to think about spending that much money on walls and a roof. Of course the logical solution to high prices is to split the cost with someone else. Unfortunately, no one wants to split the cost unless they can live there too. I have lived alone for so long that I am terrified of the idea of a roommate. Partially out of fear that they will be a freakshow and partially out of fear that they will discover my inner freakshow. I have been watching a lot of Grey's Anatomy lately and if you have seen it you know that they make the roommate plan seem totally workable. Maybe it would be if I pretended to be part of some tv series. I recognize that normal people do not make serious decisions about living arrangements based on television but I am at a loss for how to make this decision.

The truth is that I will probably make the final decision in a split second when an opportunity arises based on what my gut tells me that particular day. I know this and yet I still spend countless hours terrorizing myself with the anxiety of moving. I took a year off to relax a little and have ended up spending 75% of it fixated on the impending stress of moving. It is freakshow tendencies like this that I am worried about a roommate discovering.