I Am Lord of All I Survey

So I bought an apartment. A brand-new, one-bedroom kinda thing in the inner-city of Brisbane, right next to the train line that’ll take me to work. Its…well, it’s definitely a thing. An exciting thing. A satisfying thing. A moderately, deeply terrifying thing. Take your pick, ’cause all of these things are accurate. On the list of things I expected from my life, owning property rated right up there with adopting a real life unicorn on the list of things that would never actually happen.

And yet, here I am. Sitting in a lounge room that’s essentially my lounge room, looking at the piles of partially unpacked boxes.

It doesn’t feel like home yet.

For one thing, I don’t have my routines down yet. I keep reaching for light switches that aren’t where I expect them to be. Nothing in the space triggers certain behaviours, whether it’s cooking dinner or sitting down to write or even going to bed at a specific time. I’m still getting used to the fact that I live alone once more, which is something I wanted, but takes some getting used to after two or three years of sharing a house.

I’m reworking budgets on the fly to take care of unexpected costs that come with owning your own place.

I have run out of space before running out of boxes that need unpacking, which means I’m living among the clutter while I figure out what’s staying and what’s getting thrown away.

Most importantly, however, is this: the local Chinese noodle place serves it’s takeaway in cardboard boxes. And this makes me incredibly happy.