There Is Life Outside Your Apartment

(It's an Avenue Q reference)

When I left my flat, almost a year ago, I never imagined that a year later I would be sat in the study come junk room in my parents' house typing this blog. At the time, I was convinced that COVID 19 was going to go the same way as SARS and the other viruses that have happened over the last few years. It was going to be a whole lot of panic and then it would turn out to be nothing. Thankfully, I was quick to admit that I was wrong. 

Although there have been times in this year where I have wanted somewhere to escape to - the dog snores really loudly, we all get on each other's nerves at the best of times and it's been a year with everyone else on furlough for a stretch - except for the times I went back there to pack down, clean up and generally get ready to let go of the flat, I haven't really missed that specific place, and so it makes me feel as though the time was right to leave it, even if I feel the universe kind of forced me into it. Universe, to note, next time, smaller signals are fine, okay? 

There have been points in the pandemic where I have looked over Rightmove and seen a couple of flats in my brother's building up for sale and thought about the idea of buying one, but I also looked at some of the studios set out as a one-bedroom flat on Salford Quays and thought about how I could squash all of the things I actually needed into them. Particularly when you were allowed bubbles. The idea of being able to see my family but also get a bit of distance from them was a blissful thought, but it was a thought which ended up coming to nothing because the simple fact of the matter is I have too much stuff and I need too much space. 

On the night before I left 'Old Flat' in Surrey, I managed to hand off three large pieces of furniture which I no longer needed to someone whose son had just got his first place and was stuck for furniture. It meant that it was less to pack into the van, less to store, and no need for a trip to the tip or a bonfire - I wanted the bonfire - to get rid of the ugly as anything sofa which had become a focal point for my rage and dissatisfaction with the world. I cannot tell you how much better I felt when that sofa was out of my life. Even with all of that stuff out, there was a lot of stuff in the van and then subsequently in my storage unit, which will then have to go into another van before it finally finds a fixed abode back with me. Thinking about how to fit all of that stuff into a flat gives me nightmares and heart palpitations, so the plans for an apartment have needed to either be scaled up, or scrapped. Now that we're getting to the stage where things are reopening and life can restart, I'm having to look at options because I can't just be working from home at my parents' house forever, so some serious decisions need to be made, and I need to start being a fully-fledged adult again, and quite frankly, that is terrifying, but it is life, everyone does it and everyone finds the things that they struggle with, and there is only one way to do it, and that is to just do it and get through it. 

Where Is My Mind?

Well, it's certainly not been on writing, has it? 

That's not really true; it has and it hasn't. 

At the end of last year, I decided that my 4thewords streak was going so well and I wanted to commit to it further so I bought myself a year-long subscription and thought that would be enough of a kick up the bum to get me writing more regularly. 

The truth is though, I needed a bit of a break because the world feels like a lot at the moment, life feels a lot, work is a lot and the last thing I really need is to be heaping more pressure on myself, and yet I am doing in other areas, so writing had to hit the backburner. Yes, it is very often cathartic, and I know that's a common experience among writers, but when it's also something where you put pressure on yourself, whether it be to write a number of words or pages a day or to make a project come out beautifully, anything really where it is forcing yourself to do something, it adds an extra layer of pressure that is not necessarily healthy. 

A lot of people in the UK have been furloughed, whether that was during the initial lockdown or whether it was the flexi-furlough where people have been on reduced hours, but that's not been my experience. The industry I work in very quickly told those of us not tied - figuratively - to an office space that we should work from home for the foreseeable future. At the time, we thought that was likely to be maybe a few weeks, then maybe three months and we're now nearly twelve months on from that decision and we haven't been asked to go back in just yet. 

Whilst that has meant I haven't had to worry about my job security like a lot of other people have experienced, and I do count myself as exceedingly lucky given the number of people who have needed to start using food banks and other support just to make it to the end of the month and get their next paycheck, it does mean that work has been a bit relentless. I've had odd days of leave here and there, and I have gone through most of my entitlement for the year, but I haven't had the same kind of break I would normally get from taking some time off and going to somewhere that is away from work and I haven't had the masses of time to fill that others have described. I know of a lot of people who have actually enjoyed the furlough scheme, for their own reasons, and whilst I am really glad, as mentioned, of not having to worry about job security, I can't help but be a bit envious of the ten weeks plus that others were away from their jobs on a fairly decent proportion of their wages. I'm not saying I would have written any more if I had have had that time because that's something I will never know, but it is something I'm curious about.

Something that definitely has factored into my lack of writing though has been my almost complete and utter inability to self-censor. 

I'm having to get a lot better at this, but it's something I find really hard! What I'm talking about is things like, I want to share how difficult I have been finding certain things to do with, for example, putting clothes on ebay which were my previous size. (I have been finding this difficult, but it's not something I really want to talk about!) Whilst that in itself can seem harmless, it's often the reason why I'm doing certain things is the reason I want to talk about the thing itself. Following the example, I might say something like finally admitting I'm more likely to gain more weight rather than lose enough to fit into the things that no longer fit. I'm not ready to talk about it yet, but that's the conversation that is prompted by the talking about the ebaying... All will become clearer in a few months, honestly. 

So, that's kind of it for now, because otherwise I will fail epically at the self-censoring.

2021

 I was really excited about not writing a blog for a while because I had this fabulous reason and I was really excited to get to the point where I could share it and then have all of this stuff to talk about because of said reason. I'm rubbish at keeping secrets. I even have a bounce that people can tell I'm holding onto an hiding something, or I just accidentally blurt it out without thinking, so more people knew about this than I originally wanted, but that wasn't so bad. Until today. 

Today I got some news about the new house I am in the process of buying and it's bad enough that I'm looking at all of the bills I have already paid out for and wondering if I should just write it off as a lesson learnt and walk away. It's an expensive lesson, and the few people I have talked to about it have said that oh so useful phrase of 'it happens' but it's that whole thing of trying to avoid the 'sunk cost fallacy' - I've already paid out money I won't get back if I don't do the thing, so I should do the thing even if it causes more stress or costs me more money. Honestly, it's probably the reason people go through with ridiculously fancy weddings - you know, when the world isn't going to crap because of a horrid virus - and then get divorced a year later. They're too deep in the hole already. 

Unfortunately, the nature of the system does mean that you pay some of your solicitor's fees, a broker fee if you're using one (based on my experience, I would say don't) and for a survey, and that survey can throw up all sorts of issues that you never would have imagined, which either puts you back to the start with price negotiations, or it puts you even further back to the start of things by pulling out of a sale and trying to find something new. 

In the least snobbish way possible, the people I know work in offices. My family, my friends, friends of my family - the majority of people I know and trust work in an office doing office-y things and not building or renovating houses. That's not a conscious or intentional choice; in fact, I would prefer to change that because having mates in trades normally means you can get issues solved more quickly, even when you don't believe in asking friends for discounts on their labour. Looking around at houses, I don't know what I'm looking for in terms of issues. I don't know how much things will costs to change. I am the definition of a newbie to all of this and that makes it really difficult. 

At this point, I am still waiting for the full report to come through so I can figure out what on Earth to do, but even if I can get my head around to doing all of the work, and we can sort out the financial side of it, it doesn't feel like the same house anymore. I don't feel the same way about it, because I'm scared that a lot of the things I loved about the place will need to go and it will effectively become an absolute money pit, which I definitely wasn't signing up for. So maybe I should just go back to writing about literally anything else.