So my partner and I are relocating from the busy (jam-packed, traffic-ridden) city to the beautiful, serene, quiet, country in the coming weeks. It will for sure be a culture shock for both of us. It is always an odd experience to pack up everything you own in some dusty, cardboard boxes and have it all shipped over to your new home, your new life...how much of you remains in the old home, in the old city? How long before your new place of residency truly feels like "yours"? How many people have called that place "home" before you? Who will now call your old home theirs?
I am a very nostalgic person, as I'm sure you can tell, so I find myself thinking about all these things. I'm also not a very materialistic person and I crave simplicity. I just want a nice yard where I can plant some flowers and some vegetables, and a home I can be comfortable in. Nothing crazy, just some space I can grow in, grow old in - one day. It's easy to get caught up in the details...my partner and I ideally want a rental with a dishwasher, washer/dryer hookups, a garage...but I know what we really want is peace and quiet. We currently live below someone who seems to enjoy practicing his tap-dancing and boulder-throwing skills at all hours of the night...and next to people who we probably owe hundreds of dollars to for the insane amount of times that they have gotten us non-consensually high through their keen ability to blow weed smoke directly into our bedroom window. Oh yeah and we also have mice! They come up through our oven burners while we're cooking and run across the kitchen counter. Our 3 cats see this as a circus performance and are quite entertained by the vermin show, but don't do too much to help control the situation! We also live paycheck to paycheck because of insane living prices, even though we both have 4 college degrees between us and "good jobs".
Needless to say, it is time for a change! We are ready for simplicity, nature, growing our own food, bartering for chicken eggs, neighbors who are far enough away that we can't hear them cough or pee or...all sorts of other things. We are ready to live more comfortably from a financial aspect, as the price of living in the new area is a fraction of the current area. But with this move comes a lot of change and sacrifice. I have had to give up my small therapy practice with the hopes of relocating it successfully in the new area. My girlfriend has to give up a job she loves and move to a place with much less job opportunity for her. Yet we are trusting deeply that this is all going to work out.
Somewhere, tucked inside one of those cardboard boxes we will soon be packing together, will be a lot of hope and a lot of faith that this is a good move for us.
