Two things first:

I like moving. The cleansing of my things, winnowing down to just what I need. The Tetris-like challenge of packing (it’s a game.) The excitement of a new place, new horizons, new things to discover.

I love Seattle. Seattle is my home. I visited there recently (day job meetings at the start of April) and OMG is it home. No place else feels like it. I belong there, among the cold edges and green trees.

However. Packing up and moving from New Orleans has been more arduous than my previous moves. I’m not looking forward to the six day drive (SIX DAYS in the car. Just me and the cat. That’s too much.) I’m worried that I have too much stuff to be comfortable in the car (I can pack it to the gills like I did on the drive down, but I would rather not. I’d prefer being able to see out the back this time.) I’m sad to leave New Orleans — it’s been a magical time for me. I already miss the friends I’ve made here.

I finally realized this morning that one of the reasons this move is hard is because I’m going back to Seattle. I’ve never, never moved back to a place. (Except for that one time when I moved back in with my parents but that was just a blip and not something I’d planned for a long while. I did move back to MN for a while, but I was such a different person the experience was completely different.)

So while I love Seattle, and I’m really looking forward to being back home, there’s a daft part of me that’s sorry I’m not moving someplace new, that I’m not going to a place I’ve never been before. When I get back, I will probably spend at least the first few months aggressively exploring Seattle and going places in the city that I’ve never been to before, to help make it up to myself.

For those of you who follow me on twitter, expect lots of tweets from the road!