The slow, arduous process of unpacking is taking me so much longer than I thought it would. It probably doesn’t help matters that I’ve been largely confined to working between the time I’m finished with work (sometime at or after 6pm) and before “quiet hours” start in my apartment at 9pm. Sure, I could keep working after that, but I refuse to be the noisy upstairs nieghbor that I tried to escape. I will not be bumping and thumping around my apartment until all hours of the night. Sure, I can sometimes find something quiet to do, like last night’s folding laundry and unpacking clothes, but I also have to contend with the continued exhaustion from my packing and moving. It’s not like my rest is any good when I finally collapse onto my bed for the night since the mental residue of my life being disturbed prevents me from falling asleep easily. Plus, the most relaxing thing I’ve done all week was go to a friends’ for 2 hours to attempt to play D&D where we wound up just shooting the shit for the whole two hours. After which, I went home and continued to unpack.

Still, I’m trying to take the time to do it right the first time. I’m not sure I have it in me to put something somewhere that I know it won’t ultimately belong. It can’t be avoided when it comes to boxes, of course, since my plan to unpack terminal rooms (where I can empty a lot of boxes and then leave undisturbed since I don’t need to pass through then and will not be able to make any adjustments to them to account for stuff that doesn’t fit elsewhere) means I frequently have to hunt around for where some items got tucked away. My office and entertainment area, though, are finally looking good. I’m sure I’ll be adding things to them as time passes (the office especially, since I turned my walk-in closet into this office and I’ve got plenty of stuff that will need to be placed on the shelves overhead), but they’re done enough that now I also have to fight the urge to do nothing for a night out of the misguided belief that maybe just taking a night off to not do anything will help me rest. I already know it won’t. I’ll just feel guilty for not making any progress on unpacking and will have lost an entire evening of potential progress as the psychic mildew that is having my entire life still packed in scattered boxes disrupts any attempts at more than the absolute minimum amount of rest.

I know it’s just a matter of time until everything is done. I know that I’m about to hit a critical tipping point where all that remains is to get my bookshelves together and books unpacked, effort that will be labor-intensive but fairly swift. Hell, even unpacking my kitchen is going to be easier than trying to sort through all my writing utensils, computer cables, and various bits of video gaming paraphenalia. All my dishes stack in one cabinet. The mugs in another. The food in the tall pantry cabinet. The pots and pans in another. There is little thinking involved, just effort. Which, you know, will still be difficult. It’s not like I’m only mentally tired. I’m EVERY kind of tired. Now, though, I’ll be able to go watch a movie or play a relaxing video game once I can’t make myself put in any more physical effort. Assuming I’ll have enough left in the tank to climb the stairs, anyway. And, you know, also assuming I will be mentally tired enough that I won’t be attempting to guilt-trip myself into doing more work. The only escape from that is reading. Too bad all my books are in boxes because I’m now, as of last night, officially out of e-books to read on my tablet.

I’m sure I’m going to love my apartment once I’ve settled in. I might still need to buy more stuff to make that happen, since I’m not sure I’ve got enough rugs for everywhere I want them in my current place [I am two rugs short as of finishing my unpacking and settling in], not with one of them being repurposed for my office as I attempt to find a way to use my wheeled chair on the oddly deep carpet that my apartment complex puts in every bedroom and closet. This carpet has killed two of those plastic chair mats, which makes it the only carpet I’ve ever used that has been deep enough that the chair can cause the mat to sink into it in a way that causes it to slowly chip and crack over time. My current plan is to use the extra layer of the rug to distribute the force further and get the plastic mat more support. When I remember to go buy another one, anyway. Right now I’m just using the chair on the rug and while it doesn’t work very well, it still sorta works alright. It’s difficult to roll the chair if I’ve been sitting still for a while, but it is still possible to do it with a little effort. There’s going to be more stuff to do for a while, no matter how hard I work, since a lot of things will only come up as I experience living in my new apartment and decide that the cheap plastic bins I’ve been keeping all my video game and computer paraphenalia inside are no longer acceptable. I need good plastic bins so they don’t start falling apart when I’m moving in the future. I also need to sort them.

If this post goes any longer, it’s just going to become another, long-form copy of my to-do list, so I’m gonna end it here and try to go get a bunch of work done before nine so I can maybe start drinking nice coffee again intead of subjecting myself to the just alright coffee of my workplace’s breakroom. I miss my morning coffee and associatied rituals. I also miss having coffee before I have to drive to work. It’s rough out there…