I have lived in my new apartment for just over a month now. Can you believe it? Time has surely flown. Day to day life has been filled with training and preparing and finally teaching. It has been filled with new people and too little sleep, and a couple of adventures along the way.
It hasn’t been filled with making my house a home.
Some of my clothes are in my closet. Some are sticking out of boxes still packed on the floor of my bedroom. I’ve even done laundry. It still all goes back in a box. The maps and posters I enjoy so much are still rolled in tubes. The books I treasure are still boxed up. The knick-knacks and decorations that could easily adorn a room have not yet seen the light of day. Bare walls face me everywhere. I even bought some art and haven’t put it up.
My room mate uses the kitchen, but I don’t. The longest I’m ever in there is to make coffee in the morning or grab a beer in the evening. I’ve cooked once, and can’t seem to drag myself back in there.
I don’t watch the TV unless someone else is too. I haven’t put on a record yet. I haven’t gone to sign up for a gym membership, or to get the Costco card my roomie signed me up for.
I feel like I’m leaving soon, and there isn’t a point in settling in.
When you’ve picked a new home and a new career and moved yourself across the country for a job you think you’ll thrive in, it’s a little worrisome to find yourself two weeks in and still undecided as to whether your move was a good one or not.
I was so excited for this. I’m in a great apartment with a great room mate and a marvelous job. Technically, things are looking up. But I’m so much more used to the transitions. I’m used to the blundering and the moving from one thing to the next. I’m used to restlessness, so even though I am no longer restless, I have convinced myself that I am.
But most of all, I want to feel at home. I want to feel that this IS my home. I am looking for purpose and attachment – something that makes me want to stay, even just for a time. Something to make me unpack my clothes and my books and my maps, and to cook in my kitchen and vegetate at my TV, and to generally feel like a resident of my own home.
How do I go about finding that?
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