So, when I’d started this project, I knew that a major part of it was that I wanted to move the majority of my books upstairs, and relegate what books remained downstairs to just two bookcases – one I already owned, and the other that I purchased yesterday and assembled today (one of those cheapy five-shelf jobbers from Target, because the point was to get this DONE and not to spend hundreds of dollars on a “nice” bookcase).
Of course, as I began, I had this grand idea that this would be A Great Book Reorganization, complete with a fancy “system” of categorization plus alphabetization plus keeping all authors together and blah blah blah. In the interest of actually getting the books where they were supposed to go, I gave up on my fancy “system” and settled instead for getting the books shelved on the proper floors of my home. There is SOME rhyme and reason to where things are located, but not as much as there could be.
Which is sort of life a metaphor for my life right now. Contained, properly shelved chaos.
Also, what I discovered after unshelving the books and then reshelving them properly is that a new 7-foot tall bookcase was actually just enough to barely contain what I have, even after culling some books for donation/resale during the unshelving. AND I HAVEN’T EVEN ADDRESSED THE BOOKSHELVES/NIGHTSTAND IN MY BEDROOM! If I addressed those two spaces, I’d probably realize that I need yet another bookcase! And seriously: I’m not a book hoarder by any means. These are all books I care about. I have majorly culled the collection at various points of moving, so we are not talking about me lugging around books from undergrad and grad school that I didn’t like (no, I didn’t keep my copy of The Wide, Wide World), and 90% of my JUST for pleasure reading from the past three years has been electronic. I can’t even imagine this situation if the Kindle hadn’t been invented! And lots of my books are actually in my two giant 8-foot bookcases in my office at school!
But so while The Great Reorganization was a non-starter, The Great Migration did occur. And it is the case that the new bookcase does house all of my theory books, and the primary texts for my current book project plus the books that I’m teaching in the coming semester. And the other bookcase does house my cookbooks and my travel books and my hardcover books that are extra special and my fun Latin translations of Winnie the Poo and Harry Potter. So progress has been made.
And because of The Great Migration, tomorrow I can tackle organizing my yarn stash/knitting and cleaning the downstairs of my house from top to bottom tomorrow.
In other news, none of this makes me feel less like shit. I miss The Dude, and no amount of rearranging my house and organizing doing productive and positive stuff makes a difference with that. At least not so far. I’m hoping that I will feel less shitty as this process continues.
Reassigned Time 2.0 
Oh, do I sympathize! I just did a similar re-organization of my office bookshelves. Exhausting chore. And I dithered about how to organize it too; the purge was huge. But I now have empty shelves (gasp!) in the office. Now all I have to do is tackle the paper mountain.
How much you miss him is an important data point. Years ago one of my girlfriends left town, and as I waved goodbye to her at the airport gate, I felt like a weight had been lifted from me. By the time I got in the car to drive home, I was downright giddy. Feeling the opposite is telling you something.
Ah, but perhaps he does not feel the same. This data point only matters if it is parallel to a data point of his. He may be giddy with freedom from me. Indeed.
Or maybe he is missing you! You could actually tell him you miss him, and ask him if he misses you. That would be a clarifying conversation.