39 days

Forty days is a biblically significant amount of time. Thirty-nine days is nothing special.  At the time of this typing, I am somewhere between thirty-nine and forty days away from the opening of the Main Library's Teen Center.  Today I feel so overwhelmed by it, it might as well be a flood or a fast or some other horrendous-sounding f word. (No, not that f word, people.)

When I get busy at work, I like to make lists.  It wastes time I could be spending getting actual work accomplished, but then when I do get around to the work, I get to mark things off.  There is nothing satisfying in this life like marking things off a list.  It's triple satisfying in Sharpie.  When I make my Teen-Center-opening lists, they are deceptively simple.  The word interviews, for instance.  Just ten little letters comprising one brief list-item that represents at least fourteen separate meetings with fourteen qualified individuals.  When my list says "pack up desk," it can't completely convey the labor-intensive misery of going through all the accumulated junk that is drawn by some unforeseen yet powerful force to my little north-facing cube, but I am determined to rid myself of the unnecessary when I make the move.

I can't even bring myself to put "say goodbye to the Michael Jackson mime" on my list because I'm not sure I've got the strength to face it.  As much as I'm looking forward to a certain office upstairs, I know there's nothing out that south-facing window that can compare to the glory of my splash of river-view, the bustle of the River Market, and good ol' Michael Jackson mime.  I think I'll miss you most of all, Scarecrow.

There have been some truly awesome moments in my list-making.  Like the email I got just after I crossed off "select gaming equipment needed" telling me that my budget was nearly double what I'd spent so far.  I must admit we're going to have a ridiculously nice gaming set-up.

And even when the list additions have been tedious and exhausting and downright daunting, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that the fact that they're all so much mine is heady stuff.  My decisions, my preferences, my opinions that carry weight, my mistakes to make.  I can't take all the credit, and you should all regularly remind my gigantic ego to dial it back, but the being-in-charge-ness is pretty dang exciting.  Exciting and overwhelming and filling-up my life enough that I finally had to break down and really blog about work, something I declared long ago would be a sign of the end times.

Oh, well.  It's been nice knowing you.  Hoping for rainbows at the end of my forty days.