Fifteen days until the last lecture.
Twenty-three days until the last essay is due.
Thirty days until the only and only exam.
Thirty days until the semester is finished.
Thirty days until my undergraduate career is finished.
Thirty-one days and a new chapter begins.
Except it isn’t really a house, it’s a small (but lovely) box with windows. A box for one – and a cat, when Archie finally moves in too. I miss Archie.
After a week without a television (which really didn’t worry me at all but my mother insisted I needed one) and watching movies on my laptop and iPad – I watched When Harry Met Sally twice in one night – my aunty gave me hers which would have otherwise been sitting in storage. We set it up, leads plugged in all over the place but no signal. Leads unplugged, examined, re-plugged. Still no signal. Dad, Mum, my aunty, we all had a go at it. Still no signal. The set-top box would scan and search for channels but still no effing signal. Then on Sunday, I was doing the vacuuming and I thought to myself “Self, I wonder what this hole in the wall is? Self, why don’t you unplug the aerial and plug it into this hole in the wall. Just see what happens.” So I took my own advice and well, what do you know? Signal! Channels! Television! Sweet Jesus, Revenge.
This afternoon, Mum and I rearranged the hideously ugly lounge suite. And the desk. And the television. And it feels so much better. Like a real room. Like the beginnings of a home.
People around here seem a bit odd, though. More like their car-related habits, seeing as I haven’t actually met any of my neighbours yet. Opposite my small but lovely box with windows is a row of ten car parks and every single car that parks there is reversed in. All except mine. There are nine shiny car noses sticking out and there is one dirty black car bottom sticking out. It feels weird to be the odd one out but I feel like things have already gone on too long to change – reverse? – now. It’s strange though, no? I feel there like was some kind of parking summit long before I moved in and the memo hasn’t yet been handed on.
Another quirk (I say quirk rather than frustrating pain in the rear end) is the oven. After waiting for about an hour for some muffins to bake which should have only taken twenty minutes, a phone call to Mummy resolves that the oven is so mothereffing old that the temperature is in Fahrenheit, not Celsius. Just as a guide to you residents of countries where the F’s and the C’s are reversed, Australia stopped using the F’s and switched to the C’s back in the ‘70s.
Damn F ‘n C’s.
It’s weird that it doesn’t feel weird. Living here, in this new place of mine. It feels like home already. Not home like my parents’ home but a different home. My home.
I like the freedom living alone affords me. I can have a sex party in my living room on a Tuesday afternoon if I feel like it. (I don’t.) I can have toast and a bowl of Coco Pops for dinner if I feel like it. (I have.) I like that I can leave the dishes for three days before I wash them without anyone acting like the Kitchen Nazi – but jeez, it feels good when they’re all washed and put away and the tiny kitchen looks tidy again.
I like it here.
My cousin Emily visited me today. She gave me a pig-with-wings ornament as a housewarming present (“Annelise moving out of home? Ha, when pigs fly!”) who now sits on my bookshelf, next to a pink flamingo and a gold dinosaur. As she sat on my horrid hand-me-down couch, she kept looking around the room and saying how comfortable she felt here which pleased me to no end. I think someone saying they feel at ease in your home is pretty much the best house-related compliment you can get.
I had such an interesting chat with Em this afternoon. We were sitting in my local cafe (I love that I have a local cafe now. Before, all I had was local paddocks filled with sheep) and she said that my energy was so much more positive than it has been for a long time. I don’t think I ever wrote about it on this blog, but 2012 was a total shit of year. There were friend dramas, my self-esteem and confidence took a nosedive into a steaming cesspool of self-doubt, and it was all accompanied by a general feeling of crapshitpoo. Over the last couple of months, though, I’ve taken steps to improve things for myself (though, some things are best left alone, unable to be fixed – at least in the foreseeable future) and I guess it’s starting to show.
You know what’s really interesting? To me, anyway. Remember my post about the vision board I'd created for what I wanted to happen in 2013? Based on The Secret, visualise it and it will happen blah blah blah. But you know what? Three of those intentions? wishes? non-resolutions? things have already manifested: the house of my own, the booked trip to the USA, and the very specific and scary step (yay, vague-blogging!) I’ve taken to improve my overall emotional/spiritual/mental health. Maybe there’s something in this visualisation bizzo after all?
Also, totally unrelated to this post but there are only seven weeks left of lectures of the semester. OF MY UNIVERSITY CAREER. SEX PARTY, INDEED.
I’m moving out. Again.
Finally.
YAY!
I wasn’t looking very seriously or anything. Just a quick glance at realestate.com.au every now and then to see what was around. Nothing was ever quite right though – too ugly, too old, too far away, too expensive. But then something did come up. Close to cafes, supermarkets, the river. A teeny bit over budget but compromises have to be made, right? So I went along to the inspection on Thursday, put the application in on Friday and got the phone call at 9.03 am Monday.
I knew I’d get it. I knew that as soon as I decided to go on an expensive overseas holiday, I’d be tempting fate by applying for a unit. Like “Here! Take my money! Take all of it!” But I don’t even care. I’m moving out!
Wanderlust came calling again. Loudly. Too loud to ignore, so I gave in.
First I’m going here to visit my best friend, her husband and their little girl:
Pinterest via weheartit, original source unknown
and then I’m going here to lose my mind:
Image by ImagesByCW
According to the app I just downloaded, I’m leaving in 123 days, 11 hours, 16 minutes and 16 seconds. Or, 23 July. It doesn’t measure excitement levels but I’m sure it would be off the fricken charts.
*Edited to add: Natasha and Sarah have both warned me that New York will probably be as hot as balls in July (except they didn’t say balls because they are more ladylike than I) and even though sweating is my least favourite activity, I’ve chosen to ignore all good advice and go anyway. The deciding factor was a (roughly) $1500 flight price difference between July and the more desirable October. Can’t argue with that.
Picture from Pinterest, original source unknown
On Friday, my mother and I raised our champagne glasses.
“Here’s to being unemployed,” I said.
“Here’s to new opportunities,” Mum corrected me.
We clinked our glasses.
My summer of full-time, nine to five, work ended on Friday. Done and dusted. I knew when I gave up the security of my regular Saturdays to do the three months’ full-time that there may not be any ongoing work for me but I was still kind of surprised when all I was offered at the end of it all were some well wishes and a bottle of champagne that I downed while watching the Oscars on Monday afternoon. There were some vague suggestions of looking through the budget to see if some extra hours could be justified but nothing concrete.
The five days of unemployment and no prospects have left me feeling strangely energised. Change is good for me. I don’t actively seek it out – in fact, I think part of my brain tells me it isn’t good and that I should avoid it at all costs – but it’s good for my soul. I feel more alive when life’s direction is uncertain after being static for so long.
Perhaps because of the altered routine, I made a decision. I’m not going to writhe about with feelings of resentment, angst and grief over my work in progress any longer. The novel I’ve struggled to write since 2010 is going to have a little rest. I’m just resting my eyes, my mother used to say when we thought she was sleeping. And so my manuscript is resting its eyes. Just for a while. I know I said I would labour over it for another six months but last night, the decision to let it rest felt right.
And maybe because of the change, of not feeling guilty about not being able to write anymore of that story, another idea has arrived into my brain box, almost full formed, and I’m excited about it. Writing with enthusiasm again feels good. Change has proved to be a good thing.
And hey, now that I’ve got no work, I can write all the damn time now, can’t I?
And HEY, HEY: I started my final semester of university this week! Twelve weeks to go until I’m finished (providing all goes well, fingers and eyes crossed). Twelve weeks! How about that, eh?!
