Thursday, April 8, 2010

life is change

Change can be repetitive. My apartment is for sale. I'm going through motions I went through five years ago, staging the place, though with less angst, as my heart isn't as attached here. The pictures of my extraordinarily beautiful children are all in the drawer, as are some of the more "hippie" of my dewdads. I'm trying to make the place look like somewhere someone else might imagine living. I think I've done a pretty good job; it's actually quite elegant. I look at it myself, and think, gee, what a nice place. I could live here. That is if there was another room for my office, so I could get my books out of storage. And if there was a garden outside, not just planters and concrete. And if there was room for my partner to get his tools out of storage...

I'm greedy, and I know it; I've a much easier life (now) than most of the world. Still, it's unsettling to plan to uproot myself. But uproot I will. The partner has agreed to come with me, so that's all good. (Not that he could stay once I've sold the place.)

Part of the plan is to pick a new place to live that is new for both of us. He moved in here with me, and while I'm sure I'm pretty saintly, there is still the overtone of 'my' place here, not least because I do in fact own it. So, we will move somewhere new for both of us, and pay rent for awhile, and see whether that shifts our dynamic a little.

This is not to suggest we're aren't dynamic already. Things are flowing pretty well in the relationship department (some bumps smoothing out) but after two years of living together, there are the inevitable signs that other life continues, and one needs that, too. 

In a sense, moving will help with that too, because changes necessarily shake you up. I'm curious to see what it'll be like to be a tenant again. Last time I had a rental agreement was 1972 I think. A while ago indeed. I wonder whether being ungrounded will unsettle me (easy punning, eh?) or set me free. There's a lot of security in having your feet firmly placed on ground you own. Mind you, I don't feel that same solidity here, sitting in an apartment that floats over a concrete garage. So I guess it's been a useful transition. Not sure I could have made the leap straight from the house my kids grew up in to one that I had no stake in. Ready now, though. I've noticed that they grew up (the youngest hit the quarter century mark last month, whew) so it's not like I need to make my decisions based on more than my own selfish needs. Right?

Isn't this an all-over-the-place ramble? Which is also fine. I do enough organizing into spreadsheets in my life to take the odd apparently aimless stroll down the word street.

Which reminds me, that I've signed up for a writing workshop next month, and if anyone wants to buy my place, we'll have to work around it. I've been missing the sound of pen on paper and that's one of the places I plan for my shakeup to land me more often. Wordsmithing; extracting words from my brain, and making them make sense. This may not have been the best example, but then I'm kind of rusty. I feel like I've been away a long while.

But I'll have to leave it again for a bit -- someone's coming to see my place today, and I have to get out of here in an hour. And there are crumbs on the floor, dust on the shelves! Yikes!

1 comment:

vaughan said...

Great to read a post from you. I love your writing, as you know. Good luck with selling (and uprooting and re-settling) quickly so you can focus on the wordsmithing. Keep us posted out here!