The Overachiever Makes a Move

Welcome to the Confessions of an Overachiever blog! I hope that through it, we can connect and shake our heads at ourselves and the unique quirks — and troubles — that we experience as overachievers.

First quirk — procrastination.

I meant to write this blog in March after making the first part of my office move, but then the apocalypse descended, and I’ve been a little busy. It’s a good time to be a therapist.

So, how does an overachiever move their office? In stages with multiple dates that get changed in the middle of a pandemic, of course. Because doing it all at once when the world is calm is too easy.

Here’s what happened…

The lease on my former office space ended on February 29. Yes, I got a whole extra day with the leap year. Even so, I moved out on February 27 and got the remaining stuff I’d forgotten in a storage closet on the 28th. I should mention that my birthday was February 26, which also happened to be Ash Wednesday this year. I should’ve guessed the year would go downhill after that. When Jesus doesn’t want you to have birthday cake, you know it’s going to get rough.

I should mention that packing, especially toward the end, involved several mantras, one of which was, “It doesn’t have to be perfect, just packed.” Yep, those overachiever tendencies creep into everything. I’m very grateful for my office manager, who helped me, and my contractor. They even went scouting for boxes at the liquor store across the street. At least that’s what they told me they did over there. If they got anything else, they didn’t share.

My new office suite wasn’t ready in spite of the property manager and leasing agent telling me they were putting all their resources toward it, so we ended up in a temporary suite a floor down. I’m just happy they let us be somewhere in the building because I REALLY needed to get out of that previous situation.

So, to orient you to our timeline, we moved into Suite 310 on February 27. This particular space had formerly been leased by a government agency. It was gigantic — we didn’t even fill up 1/4 of it. If we’d wanted to, the three of us could have each picked a corner and never seen each other. When I did mindful walking with my patients, it turned into mindful hiking. I’m pretty sure we logged thousands of steps just going to the bathroom.

The powers that be first told me the new suite would be ready on March 13, and then that got pushed back to March 20, which still wasn’t the case, as the electricians still needed to do important things. Then, as you may remember, the shelter-in-place orders came down. I ended up moving essential office things into my spare bedroom, and that was it for the move a while.

I don’t know about y’all, but I hate having loose ends. The fact that my stuff was still in the temporary space — aka the world’s most expensive storage space* — lived at the back of my mind alongside worries about getting a deathly illness and the fact that I had to ration toilet paper.

Okay, overachiever brag — I have learned that I can make a roll of toilet paper last for a week or more. It’s now a challenge.

We finally got to move into our new suite on May 22. My office move lasted about three months and was fraught with complications, but we did it. I would say I work from there now, but the truth is, the cat got used to me being at home, and he’s very clingy, so I only go in two days a week. One does not reject a clingy cat.

So, what has been your major accomplishment during the pandemic? Even if it’s brushing your teeth regularly, it counts.

*Even though I was in a much bigger space, I was paying for the one I was moving into, so while it made for an expensive storage situation, it wasn’t that bad.