Mantras don't always help you sleep though.

I came to the conclusion the other day that goals really aren't worth having.  All they do is stress you out, make you anxious, direct your focus so tightly that you tend to miss out on a lot of other stuff, and ultimately disappoint you in some way.

Now, ideas and dreams - things we'd like to see or do or get, without hanging a lot of hope on and putting a lot of work into them, those are different.  They hang there in the air, and if the chance comes along to snatch them, then it's easy and generally painless and often more gratifying, in that you had no expectations attached to them.

Fate, I guess.  If it's gonna happen, it'll happen, regardless of how much I stress out about it.
It's an easy thing to think - not so easy to live, especially if you're a control-nut like me.  I need a plan.  I rarely leave the house to run an simple errand without a plan - where to go to first, can I save time by getting everything at one place, should I go here too while I'm out, blahdeblah.  And god forbid I don't have a list.

But when it comes to big things, like, say, moving across the friggin' country, it's so much harder to give it up to fate.  I want it to happen so bad that I fuss and stress and freak right the hell out, and I'm afraid that it's going to ruin the joy of finally getting to go.  Whenever that might be.  (Soon, dammit!)

***

B's been working on a research project for one of his professors back over in Bowling Green this past month, which has delayed us a bit but I'm not complaining because (a) it's money and (b) it's experience on his resume.  We've both been applying to every job we might be remotely qualified for, in every place in Oregon & Washington that we might like to live (Portland, Vancouver, Seattle, Eugene, Corvallis, and every little town in between) - I keep telling myself that competition in the job market is ree-frakking-diculous right now, that there are x-times as many people applying for all of these openings as there might be in normal economic times, and that every rejection email (or no response at all) isn't a reflection on us.  It's really hard not to take it personally though.

We still have some options open to us though, to just go and figure out the rest when we get there, but we still have some obligations here to fulfill.  Besides, driving through South Dakota in August is not my idea of a good time, so maybe closer to fall would be better anyway...

I just keep telling myself all of these things - let it happen... don't take it personally... we still have options... but it can still be overwhelmingly difficult to deal with sometimes.