Moving Day

Tonight I am spending my first night in my new home. I made good progress with my move. The kitchen is completely unpacked and organized thanks to my sister in law Catherine and my good friend Janet, who I challenged to bring her “Six Sigma” skills to this kitchen “project.”

Catherine and Janet, in addition to my brother Geoff, met and exceeded my expectations with their generous offer to help me get ready for Moving Day.

After a week of packing and moving, tonight, I am too tired to really think or write very coherently, but my mind is racing so I figured I would sit and write to sort through my thoughts and feelings.

On one hand, I am really freaked out. I am doing this on my own – and I am so out of my comfort zone. If you have been reading my blog for a while, you know that I fix things with mounting tape and a glue gun. I have never mowed a lawn in my life. I kill plants, and have been unsuccessful at growing grass to mask the abundant weeds in my previous rental home. So many things are unpredictable with home ownership and now there is no landlord to call when something breaks like the AC. It’s all up to me. But you see, over the last couple years, I was a landlord in a house that I didn’t live in…and once I finally sold it, I realized that I was already doing what I was scared to do! So what’s the big deal?

So on this other hand, I am totally psyched. I feel confident that I can do this. Yes – I have made and will continue to make mistakes. I’ll use the wrong color to touch up a wall, and not care that it doesn’t quite match (yes, this has already happened.) I’ll just cover the wall with some art until I am ready for a paint project! I’ll get scared about being able to afford the mortgage. I’ll still fix things with tape and glue when it seems to make sense. But now, I’ll think and feel about these things differently. Because I can think about things in the long term rather than as a temporary state of being…

You see, I realized something about myself – or maybe I was just reminded of something that I had forgotten. I am a “nester”. I crave my own space – my “own” space – aha! I like forming roots. That is part of what literally grounds me. To me, a house is not just an investment of money. It’s an investment of time, effort – and love – to maintain, and to improve. It’s a refuge from the rest of the world. It’s a place to reminisce about fond memories, and to contemplate what others may lie ahead.

Yes, my life just got a lot more complicated. I was debt free for all of 34 days. I was thinking of going on a major vacation like a safari, and instead I bought a house. I could have kept my life more simple – to travel more, to minimize, to have the freedom to relocate without too much complication. But – that is not who I am.

I just unpacked a few boxes that hadn’t been touched in over two years. And I was filled with contentment to find space for the things that are important to me.