I'm feeling more in charge of my life today. I made the appropriate arrangements with the phone company, the water delivery people, and the garbage service, so the transition to the new place should go smoothly.

Should.

Yeah, I know, that's what was supposed to happen last time. I can't say for sure that Eddie from Pacific Bell wrote everything down exactly the way I told him. I thought Jorge had set it all up perfectly when I moved before, but the phone installer had to come back three times before everything worked. I was more precise this time, and I knew what questions to ask, but that doesn't mean it got written up that way.

Still, I felt so good about getting that much done that I went ahead and dropped that stupid class that's been weighing on my mind so heavily. What a relief that was! Not to have all that excess busywork to deal with in the midst of all the commotion and confusion of moving is worth the $40 I paid for a parking sticker I won't use, plus $8 in health fees and the $1 student representation fee (whatever that is).

Those are nonrefundable, but I'll get the $15.50 back for the class itself. And I charged about seventy bucks worth of books to the Company. I'll be keeping those, and since I know how to access the class website, I can probably teach myself more than I was going to learn in a class I wasn't fully committed to.

David called this morning and offered his help. This is very generous, considering how full his own schedule is. He's working long days in construction, the real kind where you use actual tools, taking two classes at the JC and trying to get into a third. Plus a lot of other things I don't even know about.

So I'll try to take advantage of his offer. By the start of next week, I can be ready to move all but the things I need for work. All I need is access to the new place. No use moving from, if you don't have a place to move to.

Then this afternoon I was venting to the Boss about the hassles of moving, and he said, "What if I sent the company truck and a couple of guys from the crew over to move the heavy stuff for you?" Well, sure, if you can talk anybody into working on a holiday weekend.

What came out of that conversation is that I'm going to track down the landlord and ask him if there's any chance of getting into the new place one day early. If that works, all my problems will be solved. (Ha!)

I really did wrestle with the decision to drop the class. After one session I knew I didn't want to be there. But I felt just as strongly that I should stick it out.

I feel that I haven't been following through on things for the last few months. This made the second time this year, in fact, that I've been signed up for a class and dropped it early in the semester.

It makes me feel weak and inadequate when I can't keep a commitment, no matter what the reason is. I look around and see other people doing so much more with their lives, making the world a better place in one way or another. Then I look at my own pathetic record of scraping by with the least possible effort.

The one thing I spend most of my time on is my job, which is also the least rewarding part of my life. Without it I'd have no resources to do anything else, but what do I really do? I have no social life to speak of, and I haven't even been to see a movie in weeks. I'm not involved in anything right now, except packing and getting ready to move.

Can I trust myself to come out on the other side of this move with some energy, and the will to get out and do something? If I take a class during the next semester, will I stay the course? Can I stop saying "no" and start embracing opportunities to get away from this circumscribed life I've constructed for myself?

When I think about it, the reason I dropped this class is because sticking it out would mean "sticking it out." Even I can find a better use for my time than an endeavor that invites that infelicitous turn of phrase.

Here's how things stand at this point. My formerly spacious kitchen is now stacked high with boxes, ready to go as soon as they have a destination. I've been working at this fairly steadily. . .

. . . to the point that I collapse in a demented state of near exhaustion with a fair degree of regularity.

But this is one thing I am sticking with. With the help of family, friends, and totally disinterested strangers in it only for the money, I'll make this move work, and at the end I'll be a better person for it.

You can't get enough of this moving stuff either, right?