Gearing up...

As several of my wonderful friends have done, I've decided to chronicle my summer adventure in blog form. In case you hadn't heard, I'm headed to California starting this Sunday, June 3, until the end of August. I'll start with a week of Dow Jones copy-editing "bootcamp" at San Jose State, then fly back to Ohio to graduate and move out of my Athens apartment, fly back to San Jose for another week of training, then fly to San Diego, where I'll spend the rest of the summer on the copy desk at the Union-Tribune.

I wanted to do this first post before I left for a couple reasons. On a personal level, I'd like to be able to look back and hopefully laugh at myself. That's because at this moment my mood is more apprehensive and flustered than excited. I'm mostly nervous about the logistics of moving across the country - temporarily. In some ways, only going for a little while is much more stressful than going permanently. The car issue, the housing issue - it's all just complicated by the fact that my situation is not long-term. The other thing that I'm worried about is being away from my family, friends and boy. I always thought that I wanted to get out of Ohio, and I do like to travel, but as my departure time creeps up, I'm getting more and more unsure of myself. I also wanted to post before I left because a lot of what I'm doing right now is influencing or is influenced by my trip - to put it mildly.

At the moment, there is clean laundry all over my bed, waiting to be packed away in one of several locations. I have an open suitcase in the living room, and papers for my classes are absolutely everywhere. In short, my apartment mirrors my life at the moment: pretty messy. I have to take a test tomorrow, two tests Friday, and I have a paper due Friday as well. All this while I'm trying to spend as much time with my friends as possible and not miss out on social stuff that's going on during this last week of classes. It's a lot for me to handle right now, but I'm pushing through the best I can.

Countdown to Cali: 4 days.