Do you ever have so much work to do, so many bills to pay, so many errands to run, so many people to get in touch with, so much reading to do for class, and so many chores you cannot get to, you get sort of glassy-eyed and spend the day re-organizing your bookshelves, deciding once more that you definitely, seriously, no-kidding, need an entirely new apartment?
No? Just me?
I don’t know what’s going on with me. I’m so restless. I need a new view!
Getting antsy like this feels familiar. It’s a thing with me. My family and longtime friends — and certainly a few boyfriends — would all attest that yes, Mary needs to reinvent, flip the script, change the mood from time to time.
My need for a literal and figurative fresh coat of paint is evidenced by my fondness for fashion and by the many different things I have done with my hair over the years. Need a new perspective? Get a new pair of shoes! Want a different view? Go blonde! Trust me, everything looks different when you go from brunette to blonde — at least for awhile.
I guess I feel like life moves so fast and everything changes so quickly, I’m hardly the same person I was even just six months ago, let alone seven years ago, when I bought this place. Remember New York and Washington? Love fueled that adventure, but if I were a person who didn’t like to change her view, I wouldn’t have gone. You’d better believe I was looking for a change of scenery as much as I was looking for the love of my life. It’s just how I am.
Now that graduation approaches, now that I see (and am over-the-moon excited by) the work before me in the quilt world and beyond, I look around at my seven-year-old couch and my aren’t-they-awfully-tiny windows and my kitchen floor that I never finished and my damned dishwasher that now needs to be replaced and I think, “Fons, you’ve outgrown this place.”
And I can’t get a dog here. It’s a no-dogs-allowed building. So my lil’ Philip Larkin can never be, as long as I live here. (I hereby promise to give you all a Philip update within the week; there are several things to discuss.)
The only way it could work is if I found renters for this place whose occupancy would cover the costs of anything else I’d move into. I want a new view bad enough to poke around online and dream about such things, but this is nothing that can happen right now, I’m afraid. First things first: Graduate from school. Start paying loans. Go from part-time work to full-time. Deal with whatever it is inside of me that I don’t want to deal with so instead I’m looking to live in a different apartment. Do that first.
And then.
And then?