お楽しみはこれからだ！

06.25.23

So I survived the 1200 mile move out from the south? Midwest? I never know what to classify my hometown as lol. But I'm officially in the north-east, and I'm enjoying it so far even though my landlord is a weird, boomer libertarian Facebook user and we live on the third floor. I haven't been able to explore the area a ton, but I did get to walk around a bit and see this really beautiful river we live close to:

It's kinda weird getting used to having an apartment again instead of a town house, but I think it'll be ok. We're on the top floor of this old boarding house and it's quiet at least. The cats seem to like it even though we're living in a space half the size. There are a ton of windows in this unit and I think they're enjoying that we always have the windows open. I'm not used to not having an AC...but that will be changing this week at least. Not that I expect we'll need it a ton, but I imagine there's at least 3 months out of the year where we'll need it. And the landlord pays for electric so....I get to keep it as cool as I want :).

I had the honor of driving all three of the cats and they did surprisingly well! I put them in these huge, fabric carriers and one of them chewed a tiny hole in the mesh....then the next day the other one chewed a bigger hole and broke out during the last 20 minutes of the drive when we were in NY! It was very stressful driving with one hand while pushing her head back in with the other.

She HATED me listening to The Last Podcast on the Left, so I had to stop listening to the episode about La Llorona and had to listen to calmer podcasts for the rest of the drive lol.
One of em even pooped in his carrier and I felt so bad that I didn't know until we got to the hotel >_<. He covered it up with the blanket and thankfully it didn't get all over him, but I just feel bad knowing he was hotboxing his own fumes for a couple hours. Ah well, he's fine now and loving the new space.

This is the one that chewed a hole for his sister to make the escape. He also rubbed his nose raw trying to escape on day 1 of the drive during a storm we were driving through O_o.

I haven't started work yet, so I have a couple weeks to unpack and actually enjoy some time off before having to start again. I'm nervous cause I've only ever worked as a teacher, but I'm really looking forward to not having to deal with all of the problems and disrespect I've had to deal with the past 5 years. Well, it wasn't all bad. Really my first 2 years were fine, and then COVID happened and I think it inflamed a lot of the problems that were already there. It's gonna be a bit of a culture shock I think, but it'll be worth the free time I'll actually have for myself. It's easy to lose yourself to teaching. I don't think I could say I really felt like a person the past 3 years and everything I did revolved around this job where I was regularly exploited. It'll be nice to be at a job where I clock in and clock out and that's it. Nothing I need to take home and I'll be making more than I was there. Wild. I mean, everything is more expensive here, but not outlandishly so. It's just depressing cause I looked at what teachers make at the local public school and it's even less than I was making in my old city. And it's not like a salary is the end all be all at the end of the day, but it is a job and an important profession and it's incredibly demoralizing when you're not even being paid enough to stay above water and take care of yourself when you're expected to give up so much of your humanity in return.

Well, I'm looking forward to having lots of time for my hobbies now. And having time to go hiking and just enjoy nature! I felt myself wilting in the urban/suburban/idek how to classify the area I was living before. Just too much concrete and constant construction and noise all the time.

I was joking with my partner the other day about how I'm processing the trauma of teaching by completely starting over, like a hard reset for my life. But honestly, I think that's what I need. There's something very freeing about moving far, far away from everything you know and being someone new somewhere else. I think there's also a lot of trauma that can be associated with a location. I moved away from my hometown and lived in a rural, college town for about 6 years when I was going through school, and that experience was the first time I felt like my own person removed from this place with so much grief and the ghosts of my past haunting me everywhere. And then I moved back to it for work and to be closer to what was left of my family there. But it didn't make me happy and I found myself being haunted again. I'm happy I was able to realize this at some point. I mean, I'll say I'm glad for the experience because there's a lot that can be learned from that kind of struggle. It definitely allowed my partner and I to start our careers, and I'm not sure we would have been able to make a move like this without that experience.

I don't really know where I'm going with this, but this is the farthest I've ever been from "home"--at least the concept of where you're born. Though that's not really how I think of home in my heart, though it's how my mind defaults. So many people relate to the idea of home as being your birthplace, or at least the area you spent most of your childhood. I'm not sure I'll ever think of this area as my new "home". I think when I was living in that other town for a while, it took about 4 years for me to think of it that way. But that was still the same state I'd lived in my whole life. I feel like I may always think of this new area as foreign, but I'm ok with that. At least I'm here in a place I hope I'll like better with my partner and my cats. That's all that matters to me, and I'm looking forward to exploring and getting back into the bliss of hobbies again.