Moving Forward

I did about half of my packing for my trip, the clothes packing part.  When I moved into my house and had my washer and dryer setup, I had an issue where the waste plumbing hookup for the dryer wasn't working and so the first week I was here, I had to get a plumber out and get a bunch of pipe replaced.  Later I talked to someone who indicated that the plumber might have been both overzealous and possibly mercenary.  Anyway since then, I have some anxiety if my washer and dryer seem to be having issues, since I have this memory of standing in the garage watching the water back up.  Though I do realize in writing this that it's not like I've had a problem again, and everything is working fine.  I certainly don't remember having this sort of anxiety with my previous washer and dryer which were far
cheaper than the ones I got.  So anyway, I did a few loads of clothes tonight and ran my first "washer cleaning cycle" and that seemed to go okay.  I don't know how necessary it is, and if it's just a gimmick for Tide to sell me another product, but the washer does smell cleaner now.

It's weird, packing in my house, because I'm still not used to where I put everything and my packing rituals are different.  I do feel like everything I own is just more spread out here, and not everything is just lying out either.  I am not used to being as organized as I am now, but it actually really helps my stress level having things put away and things in their place.

I think also that the first six months of this year, I was under a considerable amount of stress from my dad passing.  I think I probably still had a lot of stress after that, especially when it came to moving into my house and dealing with the assorted things I had to get done.  But now I've realized that I'm generally less stressed, less anxious, feeling more like I can just concentrate a little bit better on what lies ahead.  I am contemplating some other changes to my life, and I feel like I've been on a progression, a path, for a while, but that the events of the last year have really pushed me forward.  I took a lot of my anxiety and fear of dying suddenly, and put it some place, in thinking about how I really wanted to live my life.  I am sure there will always be continuous improvements and things that are new and good, but I am thinking this period in time is going to be one of the biggest lifestyle changes I made.