The inner life mind of the snail

[kodalai]

One 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.

Comments

[sukino.livejournal.com]

*hugs tightly!*

[triedandwired.livejournal.com]

When I left home for college, I took very little with me, for I knew I would not visit home often, except for summers. Over the college years, I lived much as you have, moving in to school in teh fall, moving all my shit out for my 7 week winter internships in Boston, moving back into school in the spring and then moving back to my mothers house for summer - over and over for four years. I owned little and held on to very few things. I became a minimalist of sorts, but once I acquired my current job over a year ago, moved into my current apartment, and got more stable in life, I began to allow my lifestyle and accumulation/organization of things to change. I still have many ways and ideas that were influenced by my college life (maaaaannny mannny), but I have developed and honed new ways based on my current existance. It takes time, but having a place to truly feel stable and grounded in (at least for a while) is a lovely thing.

And never forget - change is always possible, and in fact good, here and there.

[okaasan59.livejournal.com]

*promptly forgets everything else after reading the last paragraph*

A kitty! Yay!

[foxglove6.livejournal.com]

I think it's great that you're noting this concern and thinking about it. It will help tremendously with actually getting through the changes; much better than ignoring the problem.

If it helps, don't force yourself to change and don't berate yourself for falling into old habits. If you want something that fits your old criteria and it still makes sense to get it, then get it. If you accidentally buy the small item rather than the big one, don't worry about it. Let the changes be happy and fun. Ooo, I can get the big box now, how exciting. Rather than looking sadly at the little box and mourning the loss. Regarding the cooking, maybe it would help to go through recipes and make yourself a meal plan. Some things that are new again to you and some old standbys for a week. Then you can do shopping appropriately. This is something I really wish I could get myself to do. No matter how many times I try to make a plan, something always goes wrong.

I'm so excited that you're getting a cat! Post lots of piccies of the potentials so that I can squee over them. Callie is going in tomorrow to get declawed :-( Kitties are one of the best inventions EVAR!

[diatomacearth.livejournal.com]

Aw, pookie. *noogies your head*

It's a mindfuck to suddenly lose a set of operating procedures you've used for so long that they're almost invisible to you. (Although sometimes, you adjust immediately to things you thought would take forever to get used to--I'm always surprised by how quickly I get used to a new place being "home," and how infrequently I wake up thinking I'm in an older one.) I hadn't really thought about it, but this is a big lifestyle change for you--it's not your first adult living situation, but it's your first adult living situation to offer you this much functionality, and freedom of space and movement.

Acquiring stuff and staying on one place for awhile is a pretty common feature of adult life, but something that's been off the table for you for like three years now, and on the heels of years of frequent long-distance travel--I totally get why it's throwing you for a loop.

Re: cooking. I think you might do something like this anyway, but after you're moved enough to be sleeping in the new place, I'd suggest stocking up on the ingredients you need to make the dishes you most want/are likely to cook while you're still in the busy, stressful transition period. Take an afternoon to do it; make a list, make an epic shopping trip. It might help, when you're getting back in the habit of the cooking you do in a fully-stocked kitchen, to have something pleasant and familiar to start with; an immediate reward for the mental effort involved in adjusting the habits of long-standing circumstance.

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

Change is not always bad, but it's almost always hard. *hugs*

I know what you mean about the cooking thing. After the big breakup, I had a lot of trouble cooking: I was used to cooking for two, my habits and instincts were off; and of course I was sick and lost the desire/impulse to eat at all. So I just stopped. For, like, two years. I didn't cook much (or eat much, which had its awful consequences as you know). Regaining the desire to eat coincided with getting back into a stable relationship, which helped in some ways, but it was still NOT easy to return to habits of stocking a kitchen and cooking that had been gone for so long. It was hard, and honestly, I'm *still* working on it. It's often a challenge to *think* of anything to make. I sometimes look through my old recipe book and find things I once made routinely that never occur to me now. I'm getting better, but it's just one example of how difficult changes like that can be sometimes.

KITTY! *That*, I am sure, is something you'll get back into the "habit" of immediately, having lived with & taken care of cats for many many more years than you ever cooked from a stocked kitchen. Instead of something you have to adjust to, the kitty will probably fill a hole you only sorta knew was there. And nothing makes a home feel like a home as much as having a living thing in it that needs you to consider its needs and return to take care of it every day.

[brinylon.livejournal.com]

I would probably just go on as before and let the change come gradually. As it gets colder it might get atttractive to make a gaint pan of soup! To get people over for dinner! And before you know it you are making giant pans of pasta sauce to freeze ;p

One of the things I'm really looking forward to is getting to live in a new neighbourhood and getting to know that. To visit a different market on Saturday, to get to know the new supermarket. These are also thing you can use to ease into a new lifestyle.