General Check-In: Self care and the Art of Moving
I don't know if I've mentioned it yet on this blog, but I am MOVING in a little over a week. Or two weeks, depending on if you count "moving" as the day my current lease ends or the day my new lease begins--there's a teensy bit of a gap.
This is beyond a doubt my most complicated in-town move to date. Thankfully, UHAUL is amazing & gives you a month of free storage with the rental of a van, so the majority of my stuff has somewhere to live while I stay with my boyfriend for a few days in between leases.
Still, it means moving everything twice and not getting to feel settled for an entire week. It means trying to clean while some of my stuff is still in the way, and having a carpet company come in mere hours after I finish getting everything into my UHAUL.
Let's just say I can't be all that surprised that I've developed a headache doing all of this in 90 degree heat.
I am trying to be gentle, take it slow, and embrace the uncertainty as part of the process. Once all is said and done, I'll have a nice space to call my own for the next year.
It's a mixed feeling. I am thrilled to live alone again after all these years. And yet, when I said "alone" I never dreamed it meant without my beloved cat, Artemis. I remember the first time I moved into my own apartment, not a college rental with roommates, and brought him with me. He was absolutely horrified and appalled to be someplace new. He hid in the closet for days, then refused to leave his favorite rug on my kitchen floor for a few more. Eventually, he became the king of our castle.
I thought he'd be king of this new one, too (as much as I stressed about having a front AND back door to worry about, of course).
Not only am I nervous to live in a cat-free household for the first time in my life, I'm scared to be alone, period. The freedom-loving 22-year-old who moved into that second floor apartment on Morrison Avenue so many years ago has become someone very different. Living alone scares me in ways it didn't before, but I think that's part of why it's so important to do it again, at least once.
I want to remember some of that courage, that strong independent energy. I want to settle back into singing in the shower in the mornings. But more importantly, I want to prove to myself that I can stay on top of the dishes, the cleaning, the general taking care of my space without someone to hold me accountable. I won't lie, my studio apartment on Morrison mostly got cleaned only when I knew I had someone coming over.
Like so many fresh starts, I have high, high hopes (cue: Panic! at the Disco) about making new habits. I want to start seeing taking care of my space as that essential component of self care that I know it to be. When my space is clean and fresh, my brain feels a little less cluttered, a little more free.
So, aside from using the heck of my new bathtub (!!!!), I plan to take a more holistic approach to taking care of myself and my space. Is doing the dishes every night so morning Amanda doesn't have to deal with them self care? Heck yeah it is! Cleaning the bathroom on a weekly (okay, maybe bi-weekly) basis? Yep.
This is a weird period of stasis, between saying goodbye to the Hufflehome and saying hello to my as of yet unnamed future apartment. My things will live in a storage unit and I will invade my boyfriend's space for a little while (thank you, Andy!).
I am trying to pause, take stock, and clear out things that no longer serve me both in the physical, packing up sense and in the emotional & energetic sense.
I can't wait to write to you from my beautiful new, entirely too large, one bedroom apartment. Until then, I write from, as my former MFA program mates would say, a liminal space between one version of my life and the next.
This is beyond a doubt my most complicated in-town move to date. Thankfully, UHAUL is amazing & gives you a month of free storage with the rental of a van, so the majority of my stuff has somewhere to live while I stay with my boyfriend for a few days in between leases.
Still, it means moving everything twice and not getting to feel settled for an entire week. It means trying to clean while some of my stuff is still in the way, and having a carpet company come in mere hours after I finish getting everything into my UHAUL.
Let's just say I can't be all that surprised that I've developed a headache doing all of this in 90 degree heat.
I am trying to be gentle, take it slow, and embrace the uncertainty as part of the process. Once all is said and done, I'll have a nice space to call my own for the next year.
It's a mixed feeling. I am thrilled to live alone again after all these years. And yet, when I said "alone" I never dreamed it meant without my beloved cat, Artemis. I remember the first time I moved into my own apartment, not a college rental with roommates, and brought him with me. He was absolutely horrified and appalled to be someplace new. He hid in the closet for days, then refused to leave his favorite rug on my kitchen floor for a few more. Eventually, he became the king of our castle.
I thought he'd be king of this new one, too (as much as I stressed about having a front AND back door to worry about, of course).
Not only am I nervous to live in a cat-free household for the first time in my life, I'm scared to be alone, period. The freedom-loving 22-year-old who moved into that second floor apartment on Morrison Avenue so many years ago has become someone very different. Living alone scares me in ways it didn't before, but I think that's part of why it's so important to do it again, at least once.
I want to remember some of that courage, that strong independent energy. I want to settle back into singing in the shower in the mornings. But more importantly, I want to prove to myself that I can stay on top of the dishes, the cleaning, the general taking care of my space without someone to hold me accountable. I won't lie, my studio apartment on Morrison mostly got cleaned only when I knew I had someone coming over.
Like so many fresh starts, I have high, high hopes (cue: Panic! at the Disco) about making new habits. I want to start seeing taking care of my space as that essential component of self care that I know it to be. When my space is clean and fresh, my brain feels a little less cluttered, a little more free.
So, aside from using the heck of my new bathtub (!!!!), I plan to take a more holistic approach to taking care of myself and my space. Is doing the dishes every night so morning Amanda doesn't have to deal with them self care? Heck yeah it is! Cleaning the bathroom on a weekly (okay, maybe bi-weekly) basis? Yep.
This is a weird period of stasis, between saying goodbye to the Hufflehome and saying hello to my as of yet unnamed future apartment. My things will live in a storage unit and I will invade my boyfriend's space for a little while (thank you, Andy!).
I am trying to pause, take stock, and clear out things that no longer serve me both in the physical, packing up sense and in the emotional & energetic sense.
I can't wait to write to you from my beautiful new, entirely too large, one bedroom apartment. Until then, I write from, as my former MFA program mates would say, a liminal space between one version of my life and the next.
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