Last week was rough in subtle and unexpected ways. I mentioned that I broke up my first fight as a substitute teacher. That was a little less subtle. Most frequently, it was being confronted by my own limitations, both personally and within the opportunities made available by my jobs. For both of my current jobs, there are certain realities that I want desperately to change, but can’t because it is beyond my means to do so and that, for lack of a better way to put it, sucks.

I am being deliberately cryptic here because short of posting a scan of my driver’s license, I couldn’t be less anonymous. While I have little to no shame when it comes to making an ass out of myself, there are certain things I probably shouldn’t say.

Aside from those work struggles, I am trying to figure out how May crept up on me so quickly. I can take some solace in the knowledge that in a few months I won’t be here to see those problems. Limited solace, of course, because I can’t escape that the problems won’t fly off to Paris with me. They will remain here, where I can only hope that someone else will address them.

When I was in California I met up with my friend Blender. We had the initial, “How are things?” conversation and prior to that point I had a series of exciting upcoming events to answer that question with. “I’m going to New York! I’m driving to California! I’m going to Coachella!” etc. This was the day before I drove home, so it was more, “Oh, you know, work…the usual.”

Later I mentioned something about how I wasn’t sure when I would be back to visit next because pretty soon that wouldn’t be possible. “Why not?” “Because I’ll be in Paris. For grad school.” “Uhh, when I asked you what’s new, ‘I’m moving to Paris,’ is one of those things you should probably mention.”

I still haven’t quite decided that it’s real, because it felt so far away. It isn’t. Not only that, it might not be a reality if I don’t get my shit together. There are still about four hundred thousand things for me to do between now and the end of August.

Fun fact: most developed countries don’t just say, “Hey, come on in!”

As an American citizen whose only previous experience with an extended stay in a single foreign country was in Ghana, this is news to me. All right, fine, it’s not “news” so much as “the first time I’ve had to actually deal with it.” If I recall correctly, there might have been a couple forms to sign for Ghana, extra passport photos to take and such, but the process was pretty much: “Hi! I was born in America and I got a yellow fever shot! Can I come to Ghana?” and they said, “Yeah! Totally!” I was never required to have a visa for my other travels.

This process is a pain in the ass. It’s manageable, I suppose, but it feels like one more impossible hurdle between now and August and what once felt impossibly far away has begun to loom over me as an unmeetable deadline.

Which is not to say that I am anything less than out of my mind excited about actually going. It’s just that it seems that there are far too many things to do between now and then.

And there are just so many lists. And charts. And calendars.

I realized that this was getting to be a problem when I made a general to-do list that included two smaller to-do lists that needed to be made.

I can be a bit of a scatter-brained train wreck at times. Occasionally I become diligent about checking off the list and getting excited about all the lines and corresponding sense of satisfaction. Mostly, though, I make these lists because writing something down 14 times increases the odds that I’ll get it done in a timely fashion by about 1000%. (As always, I reserve the right to create exaggerated and potentially inaccurate statistics.) The result is that the notebook I carry around with me has countless such lists and a lot of the same items will appear over and over again.

Obviously rather than dedicating all of my time to completing the interminable list of tasks ahead of me, I choose instead to waste my time getting excited about all the things I’ll do in the fictional world where I have already completed the items on the lists of lists of lists. I justify this by saying that it’s how I keep myself motivated to get through the other stuff. It’s ok, you can call bullshit. I call bullshit on it myself. It’s called “I am an excellent procrastinator.” (excellent procrastinator: see also: bloggers. see also: snark squad.)

AND SOME OF IT IS TOTALLY LEGIT. Like copying down all of my future school’s buildings on my map. That was a completely important activity.

Or the other day when I came across a blog post and heard about La Tomatina for the first time. So it’s good that I haven’t bought plane tickets yet because now I can go a little early and make a detour in Spain so I can spend a day throwing tomatoes at strangers. No, that doesn’t actually have anything to do with anything. I’m just really excited about this as a concept.

As you can see, I am a model of productivity.

Oh, also, I’m driving to DC tomorrow to pick up my brother. Because of work, I’ll really only be in town Wednesday morning / afternoon. In theory I should be helping him pack the car during part of that time. We’ll see how that plays out in reality.