I seem to be playing music chairs with housing. It seems that for me and my business school friends, there always seems to be one more person than apartments to live in. But this time, when the music stopped, I got a house!!!
For the last two months I’ve been crashing with my boyfriend. This means, my makeup rest on the back of the toilet, my clothes lay in suitcases on the floor and my earring collection sits in a big tangled ball. Less than ideal… but man was the price right….
But now that I’m a high flying fancy consultant with a big fancy paycheck and luxury benefits like health insurance, the time came for me to ante up and get myself an apartment. Most people then would have signed a lease, shipped all of my crap from storage in NY, hung up the “home sweet home” sign from the Christmas Tree Shops and called it a day. But not me, thank you layoffs, now I’ve developed a serious unwillingness to commit to housing.
So instead of moving all of my belongings, I’m subletting an apartment from a friend with all of her stuff in it and just a few suitcases of mine. I told you, no commitment. I’ve edited my life down to a few suitcases of clothes, a bag of handbags (I am Jewish, it’s absolutely required to have a bag of bags at all times), another few bags of heels, and $50 worth of toiletries from CVS. Not bad for a pack rat like me…
Which certainly begs the question, why am I paying for a storage unit in NYC if in reality I’ve figured out a way to live my life without the vast majority of my belongings? It certainly makes it easier to move and has inspired me to do some serious editing when I am finally reunited with my belongings. Whenever that may be. See, I’ve even plotted out my next move, when my sublet runs out at the end of the summer.
See my friend who’s apartment I’ve taken over has just bought a place in the South End of Boston and will need a roommate. And seeing as I have no place to live anyway as of the end of August, I figured, why not, that sounds fun. Turns out when you get rid of everything you own, moving is a breeze and when you refuse to commit to anything, you are free to change your plans on a whim.
Hoodlum, did you hear that??? I’ve finally become a housing bus person. I can get on or off the bus anytime I like, whenever I feel like it, with virtually no planning and no commitment.
For the rest of you, see my sister and I have developed a theory on life. There are two types of people, bus people and not bus people. Bus people can move to Europe with no plans, when they get there travel around by getting on the bus and getting off whenever they feel like it, having no knowledge of where the bus is going, or where they are when they get off. They are like leaves in the wind, no planning, no commitment, go with the flow, life is a feather in the Forrest Gump winds of time.
We are not bus people. We always dream of being bus people, but we are not bus people. We plan, we organize, we like to know where we’re going, endless ambiguity gives us heart attacks, and getting on a bus when you don’t know where it is going seems stupid. What if you get on the wrong bus? (See for bus people, there is no wrong bus) What if you get lost when you get there, what if you miss out on some cool new thing on the other bus line? Questions like these and more are exactly why my true calling is in event planning and catering, I’m a planner.
All of this begs the question, did unemployment change me? Did a few months of napping on a glorious green couch fundamentally change the person I used to be? The answer is probably not, but I got to be honest, it’s nice to know there are even hints of bus-ness floating into my life. Next stop, becoming a real runner.
OMG, what if I became a runner who didn’t plan???? Ha, maybe this is the summer of reinvention? Or maybe this is just me planning on how to reinvent myself in a way that looks like I’m going with the flow? Crap that defeats the purpose. Must come up with a better plan to stop planning so much. Haha, sometimes I love how my brain works…
Adventures in Between 