So, I've been anticipating this for a while, but today it became official.

Pardon my mysterious tenor, but it's the only way I know to talk about it at all.

Here is the benefit:

Full-time pay (and perks) for part-time work, allowing more time to work on my art and books, as I've long desired.

Here are the detriments:

Leaving my groovy penthouse behind, and Lexington behind.

Leaving my computer behind, and the internet behind, and without until I can afford a new one (or possibly longer, based on other potential complications).

Leaving my stereo and music behind. (Was never able to rip CDs onto a hard disk, as I'd planned, once the laptop was taken back.)

Leaving my friends behind (few of them admittedly, but still).

Leaving girls behind, and any prospect of their company, or modelling. (Strangely, after a last-minute unprecedented episode that reminded me both how blissfully wonderful and bitterly vexing/blithely inconsiderate/snottily disrespectful they can be. But the bliss was extraordinary, a perfect last episode if never I experience it again. And it was so heaven-sent unlikely that it feels as if I might not.)

Leaving my urban landscape behind, to live in a more suburban-style setting, a gated sterile community (with a swimming pool, but only men), requiring a car to get anywhere else.

Worst of all, it would still feel like an even trade, except that eventually it became clear that I'd have to leave my cat, my girl, behind.

If I'd been excited before, I became forelorn then. It's breaking my heart to leave her.

So, basically, I get to take my cameras, some hard drives, and some clothes, along with a few books to read.

The new gig starts mid-September (and, not incidentally, will involve coping with my biggest single pet peeve on a daily basis).

But I leave this weekend.

Full-time pay for part-time work, allowing more time to work on my art and books.

But it's gonna feel like forever until I can finally get the new computer, and get down to that (and back to the internet).

Am I excited? Not really at all. No.

Simply resigned to the importance of the book itself.

It feels like something I have to do.