Goodbye, old house: the end of an era

I said goodbye to my old apartment yesterday. It was the first place I called home here in Colorado. A friend of a friend was willing to let me temporarily crash-land in one of their spare rooms, but that was short lived (it’s a long story.) I was frantically looking for an apartment and this little place with nice enough reviews and a brightly shining homepage that called out to me. Immediately I knew it was the one. I scheduled a tour, along with a few others just in case, and confirmed my suspicions: it lived up to the hype. It was the first tour of the day and I was so impressed I canceled every other tour and immediately applied. I officially moved in on the 11th of December, 2019, and the rest was history. 

I could fill pages with all the adventures I have had while under that roof, but let me give you the cliff notes version. While under that roof, I:

Went through nine jobs

Had three different cars

Had three different friend groups

Went to two churches

Adopted one cat

(I believe AMC told me I went to 67 movies last year alone, so that number is probably in the triple digits for the last four.) 

It’s surreal to see how much life has been lived in the last four years. As adults, we don’t have yearly milestones like we do as kids, so life goes even faster. And yet, sometimes I still get antsy. I feel like life isn’t moving fast enough. I get hungry for a later point in time, almost as if I’m waiting for life to start. Despite all that has happened, I still have those days. I don’t know why. Maybe I will explore that this year. 

But as I have written countless pages about these last four years and said countless goodbyes, one thing feels oddly clear to me: only in the last year or two do I feel like I have grown at all. Sure, I have developed my skill set and my financial situation. I have learned a thing or two about cars and about money and about movies, but only in the last year do I feel like I have changed. Only in the last year have I started looking inward to see the flaws I need to work on, and the gunk that needs to get thrown out. Only in the past year have I started noticing all the things I have needed to change in order to live a happy life. 

It’s almost as though I was running from myself and am only now able to see it. I used to think I had the wrong job, maybe even the wrong career. Then I got that figured out, but there was still something in me that needed work. For a while it was friends, but I started figuring that out too. I still have a lot to figure out, but I am slowly realizing that I still follow the pull everyone else has on me. I’m still learning how to function with others, how to compromise, how to not compromise. They’re all things I am still figuring out. 

So, as I enter this next chapter, the theme I look for is proper foundations. I spent five years living alone, so learning how to coexist with someone is going to be an adventure. I want to learn how to develop a quality life. How to establish friendships that last, rather than ticks on a checklist for the next six months. I want to do things properly, and to spend my time well. I want to continue learning how to live in a way that is solid, that isn’t another disaster waiting to happen. I have seen a lot of people come and go, and I’m no stranger to emptiness, so I want to build better. 

That’s what my gut tells me this new season is all about. The last four years were about one giant downfall. In a way, it has been the story of my downfall. It has been me coming to the end of myself. I had to see how foolish I was in order to see the need for wisdom. I had to see how much destruction was inside of me so that I could clean it up. It will be slow. Painfully slow. But every step will be deliberate and concrete. No more wobbly houses! We are here to do life right! 

I hope to get focused on doing life right, and to share what has worked for me. What lessons I have learned, and what takeaways I seem to have. I hope you will come along with me on this journey, and I hope you learn something from my experiences

Until then

Cheers!