Unsettled

Summer is a time of change for me, it seems, more by default than design. This summer I am moving across town (more on this later) and changing jobs for the third time in just over a year (an unpleasant story that is best left untold for now). 

As ESFJs tend to be, I am a lover of tradition. My "on this day" Facebook app tells me that this week every year I head to camp. Not this summer, partly because of the planned move and job change but mostly because I realised months ago that I would be unable to make the necessary plans with the Wonk. The move and job change are recent developments and useful excuses. Also a useful excuse: the ex is moving out of town, and we have had to rejig our custody arrangement so Son will stay with him most of the summer. 

I have been having a hard time with the whole "lack of planning with the Wonk" thing; it makes me feel like an afterthought, something to be slotted into available periods only after all other plans are made. This, I know, is not the case -- for starters, there of course are no other plans -- but nonetheless it bothers me and I do not really know how to make it better or see a realistic chance that things will be different in the future. Ps like to leave things flexible; plans stress them out. This may just be the new normal. I decided last year that I would not go back to camp without him; it is too difficult, too lonely. It seems my family has just realised in the past week that I really am not coming, despite the fact that I have been saying so for months. Son has apparently been assuming that we were getting on a plane as soon as school ended. ("Wait, you have work? What?") I can't blame him; we have gone away every summer in his memory. 

The roommate has been drooling over real estate for a few months, making me increasingly nervous that he would buy a place and leave me. I cannot afford to keep this house on my own, I do not really want to take my chances on the open roommate market, and I don't want to buy a new place only a few years before Son graduates. Fortunately, the roommate decided that although he did want to buy a new place, he also wanted me to come with him, so we will not be homeless for the near future. The new house has less space and is set up differently (we have separate living spaces in the current place) but it is newer than our current house, cheaper and nicer than an apartment, and will be fine for now. 

I feel like I have been saying that about my living situation for years: it will be fine for now. 

Packing it is, then. I have started taking pictures down -- the Wonk is especially good at finding personally meaningful art for my walls -- and putting various nonessentials into boxes for the move. Since I have been moving jobs so often, I am used to being surrounded by boxes, but it does add to my overall sense of a lack of stability and security.