I'm moving today--or at least starting a move that will unfold over a few weeks, since I'm not going far and I still have work to do settling Tom's estate. My new address will be the 21st place I've lived in my life and the sixth in the past seven years. (You read that right: Boise to Oakland in 2012, Oakland to Seattle in 2013, then two apartments in Seattle, then here with and without Tom--and now back to Seattle. )The house I'm leaving has never really felt like home, except when Tom was here. His presence was strong in the first weeks after he died, but soon this too-big-for-one place felt empty, even with the volumes of stuff I'm still sorting through eight months later.
I could write more about that (and I will), but this is a post about my next stop, a tiny studio apartment/townhouse hybrid I've mainly chosen because it's on the ground floor (for a relatively easy move); in a walkable, transit friendly neighborhood; and I was able to sign a short lease. It's possible--maybe even likely--that I may move again before the end of 2019.
Or it's possible that this new, tiny place will be just enough, just what I need. It's inexpensive by Seattle standards, possibly cheap enough that I can afford to leave for a few weeks to go somewhere warm each winter if I decide to stay in the Northwest.
Or I may feel a pull to move one more time, either in Seattle or to somewhere else, ideally somewhere I might live for more than a few years. It's also possible I may decide to claim no fixed address at all--to fully embrace my peripatetic ways.
As you can tell, I really have no idea. This year will be about trying to sort that out--trying to divine my own wishes after the most intense year of my life.
Although I write infrequently here, I journal every day. I'll be starting a new journal to accompany this move; I decorated it a few days ago. The photo above is from the New Internationalist calendar a few years ago. The ticket stub from an Elizabeth Gilbert lecture a few years ago has my favorite quote from that night: "Be a highly disciplined half-ass." The poem is by Jan Richardson, a favorite of mine since I first heard it in UU Wellspring a few years ago and an especially apt one for this new season of discernment:Travel the most ancient way
of all:
the path that leads you
to the center
of your life.
See you around again soon.
