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The inner life mind of the snail
Jul. 22nd, 2009 11:17 amOne more week until our lease starts on the new place. Two people are checking out my apartment today, and once we have a taker my landlady will give me a move-out date. I'm very excited and looking forward to the new place, but at the same time I'm also kinda... scared.
The house is unquestionably a huge upgrade from my current place. Much more space, much more amenities for a much lower price, in a much better neighborhood. I'm not scared of my roommates, who are very nice, or of the moving process, which I'll have at least two weeks to complete. It's not even so much that I'm scared of change as I've changed residences pretty much once a year now for all of my adult life. It's something else.
The change is going to be to me, to my lifestyle, and to the way I think. I'm scared because I've spent my entire adult life moving from one temporary, limited shoebox to another. I'm scared because I've spent seven years with a certain set of habits, of thinking patterns, that are going to change now.
For example, whenever I've had to acquire furniture or other domestic devices, I went shopping with the mental metric "can I lift it without assistance, will it fit in the back seat of a sedan?" Anything that didn't meet that metric (with a few obvious exceptions like bed frames) was rejected. Non-furniture items underwent a similar process; if it couldn't fit into a handbag or a backpack, I wouldn't get it. When doing grocery shopping, I never buy more than could fit into a bike basket. And I always look for the smallest package size, even knowing that it's cheaper to buy in bulk, because I simply never had the room to store things.
For the past three years my cooking ability has been severely limited; in Japan I had no oven and few ingredients, and in my current apartment I had no oven, no freezer, and no space whatsoever. The limitations have sharply reduced the menu of things I know how to cook. Now that I'm going to have a full fridge and freezer, stovetop and oven, all manner of cookware and lots and lots of storage space, I'll have to remember everything and get in the habit of cooking again.
Basically, for all of my adult life I've been thinking like a snail. My home and my possessions needed to be something that I could pack up and take with me: in a suitcase, on an airplane, in a car. But that's not necessary any more, and that's what feels strange.
I'm going to get a cat. I've wanted one ever since I've left home, but circumstances have never allowed. Now I can. I'm so excited that I can hardly wait. But at the same time, I'm scared.
The house is unquestionably a huge upgrade from my current place. Much more space, much more amenities for a much lower price, in a much better neighborhood. I'm not scared of my roommates, who are very nice, or of the moving process, which I'll have at least two weeks to complete. It's not even so much that I'm scared of change as I've changed residences pretty much once a year now for all of my adult life. It's something else.
The change is going to be to me, to my lifestyle, and to the way I think. I'm scared because I've spent my entire adult life moving from one temporary, limited shoebox to another. I'm scared because I've spent seven years with a certain set of habits, of thinking patterns, that are going to change now.
For example, whenever I've had to acquire furniture or other domestic devices, I went shopping with the mental metric "can I lift it without assistance, will it fit in the back seat of a sedan?" Anything that didn't meet that metric (with a few obvious exceptions like bed frames) was rejected. Non-furniture items underwent a similar process; if it couldn't fit into a handbag or a backpack, I wouldn't get it. When doing grocery shopping, I never buy more than could fit into a bike basket. And I always look for the smallest package size, even knowing that it's cheaper to buy in bulk, because I simply never had the room to store things.
For the past three years my cooking ability has been severely limited; in Japan I had no oven and few ingredients, and in my current apartment I had no oven, no freezer, and no space whatsoever. The limitations have sharply reduced the menu of things I know how to cook. Now that I'm going to have a full fridge and freezer, stovetop and oven, all manner of cookware and lots and lots of storage space, I'll have to remember everything and get in the habit of cooking again.
Basically, for all of my adult life I've been thinking like a snail. My home and my possessions needed to be something that I could pack up and take with me: in a suitcase, on an airplane, in a car. But that's not necessary any more, and that's what feels strange.
I'm going to get a cat. I've wanted one ever since I've left home, but circumstances have never allowed. Now I can. I'm so excited that I can hardly wait. But at the same time, I'm scared.
