The Great Undoing

The past few months have been quite the rollercoaster ride to put it bluntly. I used to be one of those people that was so afraid of change that the mere thought of it made me want to hide under the covers and stay there until I was pulled out, kicking and screaming. I am beginning to see, a little later than most people, that change is a very necessary part of life and a requirement. I've learned to become friends with it and for the most part change has treated me pretty well. If anything, it has taught me more about myself than I ever could have imagined. My only regret is being so afraid and letting what might have been great things slip out of my hands due to this fear.

Change has enabled me to get very honest about parts of my life that are no longer working and no longer suit me. I think I have changed more in the past 6 months than I have in the past ten years. Once change took hold, things began to get very different very quickly. I was able to face a lot of difficult things in my life with a clear head and maturity that would have been lacking beforehand.

One of the most significant changes is my moving from one residence to another. I have lived in the same place for the past thirty years. I was in my early twenties and thought I knew a lot about the world. As time would bear out, I didn't know a damn thing! I was told that buying property was the 'smart thing' to do as rents went up, etc etc and homeownership was the Holy Grail. It was one of the biggest check marks one would attain on the 'Life Script' and if you owned a home, that meant you had somehow 'made it.'

I did love living here at one time, probably more so in the beginning as I was truly on my own (albeit with a roommate for the first ten years) and that meant I could basically do as I liked whenever I liked and it was great. But over the years, I began to feel very disillusioned with the whole idea of homeownership and these feelings began to spike as I kept getting laid off or let go from one job or another and my income began to reflect this.

Home ownership can be very rewarding. Some people are born to it and some of those people have homes that they live in and homes that they rent out to other people. Some people really go whole hog into refurbishing their homes, upgrading frequently and making their places into showplaces. There's nothing wrong with that. All the power to those people. But it's just not for me and has not been for a very long time as my priorities have changed greatly as I've begun to develop other interests and desires. I have also become known as 'house poor' and in this economy, there are a lot of us.

People seem to think that my living here thirty years means that this place is paid off. Nothing could be further from the truth as I was bitten not once but twice by the Great Refinancing Bug of the time spanning the early 2000's to the recession. This home is no more mine than the day I signed the papers on closing date.

The thing about a paid off house is that, you still need to pay taxes as well as do a lot of upkeep. Things still break. You might need a new A/C unit or a new roof or some other things. It really never ends.

This year I made the difficult decision to give this place up and put it on the market. Once I did that, the mental shift began to occur and for the first time in so many years, I began to open my mind to new possibilities and opportunities. Once the decision was made to put it on the market, then the Great Purge began. I donated furniture to various charities and gave away unseen amounts of stuff in other directions.

It is truly amazing how much crap one can accumulate in thirty years or less in some cases. Within the process of getting rid of stuff, it is amazing how much lighter I feel. It is good to get rid of things that no longer suit us. It's also a great way to figure out which things we really cannot live without as well as the things we might need to create a new life elsewhere. For example, I am keeping my computer stuff as well as all of my art papers and such. These things turn into extra income so therefore they are coming with me.

The place I will be moving to is much smaller than where I am now. It suits me to a T as I am single with a cat. I will be a caretaker for a friend and living in the efficiency apartment behind the main house. I really could not be happier or more excited. I will have my bedroom, a private bath and a studio. Yes. the old diningroom in the main house is going to be where I am putting all of my art and computer stuff. I have already mapped out where everything is going to go.

You really have no idea what this move is doing for me emotionally. It really is going to be good for me and I feel such a lift knowing that I have the open road ahead of me now. The community where I am moving to is part of the biggest local art scene around here. It has long been a dream of mine to live in that area and now that I really am going to, just seems like a dream come true. I think that spending time in that atmosphere is going to do things for my creativity in such a way that I really cannot wait to see what unfolds. I have not been this excited about anything in a very long time!

The Turning of the Tide

Wow! It has been a long time since I've had the chance to just sit down and get caught up with this blog. Things have been interesting, crazy, scary and great all at the same time. I think the buzzword of the year has been 'Change'. 2014 has been a change every other day, if not several times a day. The changes occurring include change of scenery, change of mind, change of experience...a lot of things.

I've come to a lot of realizations within the past few months in which I'd cast aside things that no longer served me in order to create the life that I really wanted. For so long, I've spent years trying to please other people and live the way that they thought I should be living. After a while, it's become apparent that I've long since outgrown those roles and in the process had become depressed and unhappy. I was like a round peg trying to fit into a square hole. When I gave up trying to suit others and what they thought I should be doing and began to really think about what I wanted, the shift began to take place.

When I was younger, I was sold a bill of goods about what life is about and what we all should want. Some people called it the 'Life Script'. Basics of the Life Script include going to college, getting married, having children, buying a house and many other things that people do around the world, not just here in the US. I'm not saying that this is bad. The Life Script works really well for some people and they are very happy fulfilling those preset roles and then there are others like me that come to the realization that parts of it are not all it's cracked up to be.

I was in my early twenties, when I became a homeowner. At the time, it seemed like the thing to do. I was convinced that I was making the right choice. It was sold as part of the 'American Dream'. For a good long time, it was great. I was making the requisite amount of money to live on my own as a single person, while maintaining a household. And then 2008 happened and I became one of millions of a statistic, where people who had been living pretty well suddenly found themselves cast adrift via massive layoffs, housing crashes and many other things.

I had lost a decent job where I had been with a company just shy of twenty years. I had wanted to retire from there but life had other ideas. My position was eliminated and I managed to find another job with a good company in a completely different industry. I wasn't making what I was at the first job but managed to hold it together as best I could while the cost of living began to rise higher than my paycheck. This 'good company' folded the end of 2013 and I was laid off yet again. I managed to get another job but this time as a contractor/temp at a financial company close by my home.

It seemed that with each successive position the pay decreased while the cost of living skyrocketed. I had become a slave to my home and it was beginning to chafe. I was getting tired of going into massive debt just to keep a roof over my head and after a while, the American Dream had become the American Nightmare. I finally had to make the hard choice to put my home on the market.

By the time that the decision came for me to do so, I was more than ready. I began to feel as if I was in a bad marriage. It was great in the beginning in the Honeymoon Phase with a few pockets of good times but the rest of the time began to wear on me greatly. It just never seemed to get any better. I was beginning to feel like I had a choke-hold around my neck with no way out. Having my own place was no longer a pleasure, it was a chore.

So, the place has been on the market now since mid-March. It's a condo in a sea of many other condos for sale. I'm not quite sure about how the condo market is doing but my realtor is maintaining a positive attitude.

I had always thought, due to earlier conditioning, that letting go of my home would be this traumatic experience but to be quite frank, it has been a lot easier than I ever expected. I opened my mind up to the possibilities that stretched out before me. Because I had been living here for so long, I had amassed a great deal of "stuff". In the process of throwing out, selling and donating this 'stuff'', I've marveled at why I had ever thought I'd needed any of it when it was so easy to just let go of it.

I barely have any furniture left and I am completely okay with it. I even got rid of my TV and cable. I still have internet though, can't live without that. I'm going to be donating more furniture again because I am going to be moving into a much smaller place soon.

In a midst all of this transition, it's been really interesting to see who was in it for the long haul with me and who wasn't. I gotta tell ya, I've got some really good friends who have listened to me, put up with me and have been nothing short of supportive. This transition has also opened the door to other relationships as well. I just am floored at how great people have been and how truly blessed I am.

As the sun sets on one life, it will rise again on another.