We are all a little bit knackered after a long day packing, lifting - rinse and repeat. Moving isn't a lot of fun under normal circumstances, yet due to all of the other schedule changes in life - *we are under-prepared and over tired, but have to be out of here tomorrow.
This is how I found my daughter sleeping in her room this afternoon.
This will be our last night in this apartment and it is kind of bitter sweet, as while we are all excited about opening the next chapter and all it contains, this place holds memories too. When we bought it, we gutted the inside and renovated from scratch into a place that was our own. But I think the largest even is that our daughter was born while we lived here and it is here that we went through a thousand issues since that time.
From the first few weeks that she was held in intensive care, to the next year where she was not sleeping and I would spend hours every night walking her around the suburb so my wife could rest, who was still recovering from the delivery. And then, the morning we found our daughter having seizures and I held her while waiting for the ambulance, unable to recognize her contorted face.
Memories don't have to be good to be valuable.
It was during these times that I started writing and am yet to stop. I have sometimes wondered that if things had been smoother, if we hadn't have been crushed financially by medical costs, if things had been easier - would I have found this hobby, this love? I don't think so, at least at the time.
I have disliked so much of the last 4 years, but I wouldn't trade it in now as it has also brought so much value to my life, including an increase in gratitude for the small things life offers. One of those is the opportunity to express myself through writing, which might not seem like much for many, but I am far from a public person, far from a person who puts themselves on display - I have always been a bystander, an observer who never put all into the game.
The last few years, there has been very little I have held back and I am unsure how much energy I have in reserve these days, as it seems that I have put a lot out without inputting enough back in. I am tired a lot of the time and I think that my body is suffering. This year was meant to be the "recovery year" where I spent more time working for myself and I was just starting to get things aligned to get going, when the current situation buried many of the plans.
Well, they aren't buried, they will just have to change somewhat.
Plans change and life moves on, no matter whether things are good or bad - new memories will be made. While I hope that the future will be brighter than the past, I am wise enough to know there are no guarantees in this - and naive enough to still work toward it. In my opinion, taking care of oneself means finding something worth working for - while some seem to think it is avoiding work altogether.
I think that in the last years, I have built a pretty strong foundation within myself and I plan on leveraging it a little to build upon. One of those the components in the mix is being more risk taking and a little carefree with the future, rather than worried about the outcomes so much that I freeze in the moment. The future is important, but it will likely be a mess if the now isn't attended to.
But for now, I am going to take my aching old body to bed so that it can get up early and pack and lift some more. Tomorrow night it will lay its head on the same bed, but under a new roof and I wonder, will it feel like home?
Goodnight.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
I bought my first house as a student. Yeah it’s funny. It’s nothing fancy. I was finishing up my doctorate and had a job offer at hand. It was top of the 2002-2007 bull market. And I thought my Apple stocks were too high and will be enough.
One of the best financial decisions I made looking back.
However, at the time while the stock sale was excellent but the house purchase wasn’t. I essentially bought at the top of the housing market. But I never worried about it. Because I bought the house to live; not to sale.
It was a cheap house in a marginal neighborhood. Later on when both my wife and I started working after school it was below our means. If you read about socio-economy, people will tell you that it is never a good idea.
But we lived there for 5 years. My first daughter was born there, played in that large backyard (I miss in now as I don’t have one, especially in the current quarantine state). So many memories... good and bad. But we eventually moved out after it was burglarized. But still couldn’t sell it. Put in on rent. Got a evil tenant at first :) went to court to get in out. Then got a series of good tenets. But one eventually burnt the house down. Literally. It was a kitchen fire and the house was totaled:)I mean literally burnt to the ground.
Re-built it from foundation up. Took 6 months, as there was hurricane Harvey! But eventually rebuilt was complete and sold it last year at a modest profit.
Long story eh?
Do you mean that you should have moved at that point?
I have never rented out an apartment but I think it would feel kind of strange at first, especially if I had lived in the place prior. I bought my first place at 18, but it was liquidated just after I came to Finland to pay for costs of relocating my mother, who died a few months later from cancer anyway. It would have been a bit of a different life if it was rented out and I had sold it a few years later.
The good and the bad memories of a home is probably what makes it a home in the first place - a place of living life.
Yeah probably we should have moved our earlier. But I still don’t regret it
Naww poor little knackered tacker XD I have a photo of my daughter sleeping like that at around the same age, think it happened after she'd been steadfastly refusing to nap even though she desperately needed one xD
And I think you would have eventually worked your way into writing, it just may have taken longer and not necessarily in this form because people just seem to find ways to things they like doing (whether they take it up or excuse themselves out of it is another thing).
The new house will probably go the same way as your apartment when that was new. It'll feel weird at first but that's unlikely to last long :)
Precisely.
Likely in older age :D
What a story from your heart here and such a tender moment of your daughter there on the floor. I hope that she has fully recovered from the seizures. Read your post to Marian (wife) now and she was nearly in tears. Glad that you find an escape in your writing as it is a great habit.
Read what you wrote about lying down your head on the pillow on the first night five years from now and you will see how life changes us.
Just think about, as I know that it's all worth it!
Blessings to you guys!
Something I am really looking forward to is being able to look back through what I have written about the future and see how things have progressed, or failed :)
Best of luck at your new digs. May your future for you and your Family be very bright :)
Cheers mate :)
I'm sure it will feel like home - at first you'll have that strange feeling that you're on vacations, but sooner than later you'll embrace it as a new safe haven. Wish you all the best!
I hope it feels like a vacation! :D
If she was sleeping like that in a tree she would look exactly like a koala bear. Lol.
Good luck for the rest of the packing and moving. We'll talk at some stage when you're settled in.
She didn't want to sleep, so I left her in her room and this was about 10 minutes later :D
The connection is set up at the other place so it should be possible tomorrow
She's headstrong, but can't fight sleep forever.
This has been tweeted out also:
When I look at @tarazkp, I feel the feelings of a lonely foreigner living in cold Finland, leaving warm Australia.
The Australian man I met in Korea said, "I originally wanted to be a shipyard engineer, but in Australia I only had farmers, fishermen, and ranches, so I came to a Korean shipyard."
When I saw an Australian who came to Korea from his hometown because he wanted to fulfill his dream, it seems that @ tarazkp's heart in Finland is a little understandable.
Is the solitude and sadness behind @ tarazkp's smile? Is the loneliness and sorrow of Australians who live far away from home to fulfill their dreams a fantasy created by my imagination?
I'm sorry i'm not good at english!
Your daughter is like a sleeping cute princess, but for some reason I am sad.