Turning Excitement into Exploration

Turning Excitement into Exploration

At the moment, the Vienna move doesn't seem real. I imagine I'll go through this often throughout the year, but maybe disbelief will mark only this first phase, before anything has really been done or decided or scheduled. When it's still a lot of talk and not a lot of actual doing.

In fact, rolling thoughts of these "doings" over and over in my mind paralyzes me sometimes.

I had a bit of a panic attack earlier this week because the possibility of finding work, obtaining work visas and a residence permit seems just plain out of reach. And without these, there is no move. I got a bit doomsday about the whole thing and Kiefer had to talk me back from the "there's no point, there's no way, it's too hard and we'll never make it work" ledge. I like to think of myself as an optimist, but short bursts of extreme cynicism are the way I maintain a rose-colored outlook for the long haul. So, I don't know what that makes me. A cynoptimist? What we've realized, thankfully, is that while we each have these bouts of disbelief and doubt, they seem to come at different times. When I'm negative, K is positive and vice versa, so we keep each other on track.

So how to bring myself back around? I work well in phases, with time-lines. I need some sort of structure and purpose and tasks to put on a To Do list to make things real and manageable. Is there a name I can give this phase? This pre-planning phase in which it's too early to look for an actual job or an apartment, but necessary to think about it? What about the Too-Early-to-get-Freaked-Out-Just-Start-Planning-and-Researching-and-Trust-that-We-Will-Find-our-Way phase? Or, the Remember-that-Just-Because-We-Don't-Have-All-the-Answers-Today-Doesn't-Mean-it-isn't-Going-to-Happen phase? Or, maybe we're in the Turning Excitement into Exploration"phase.

Yes. I think I can work with that. Today, we're in the Turning Excitement into Exploration phase and we get to focus on building relationships, making connections and learning German - things we can do today. See, rose-colored glasses are back on.