(no subject)
I sold my house and moved into a rental condo last week. Closing on the house was Wednesday. I've been doing nothing for days except packing, cleaning the house, dealing with movers, and now unpacking and cleaning the condo. In the weeks running up to the actual sale, all of my free time was focused on house repairs and improvements required to get the house ready to be sold. It's been a huge undertaking to downsize from a 3 story, 3 bedroom house into a 2 bedroom condo. I'm still unpacking boxes. I'll be finished with that task tomorrow. I don't know how much time it will take me to actually get things organized. Maybe a month. Don't really care, tbh. I'm finally out of reach of the crazy serial rapist who attacked me. Short of a one-in-bazillion chance, there's no way he could find me here. I'm out of the usual territory that he's been roaming since 2010. I can get back to simply living my life and dealing with the usual good and bad events of a normal life. I feel like I can breathe again.
The condo I'm renting is cute, not perfect, but quite cozy and livable. It's so much easier to live in a small, single-story place. I no longer have to walk down 2 flights of stairs just to do laundry, for example. That seems a minor thing but after 17 years of hauling laundry up and down 2 flights of stairs, let me tell you, I am loving having everything on one level I no longer have a huge yard to take care of. No more multiple stories to keep clean. I have so many physical issues now that I can no longer maintain a big house by myself. I only plan to stay in this condo for a year, but I already know that I will only ever live in condos or single story rambler style houses from now on.
Next steps for me will be to start actively scouting out somewhere (here or elsewhere in the US) where I can both afford to live and get a job. There are lots of lovely places out there in the US where I'd love to live, but where there are no jobs, or only poorly paying jobs. Likewise, there are places with a lot of work (like the DC area) but which are too horrendously expensive for me to be able to afford to live on my single salary. I still am favoring a couple of places, namely Portland, OR and Ashville, NC. Portland seems like it has more employment opportunities but it appears to be becoming steadily more expensive. Ashville looks amazingly beautiful and may be more affordable, but employment there seems more limited. I'd love to move to Charlottesville, VA but it's bizarrely expensive and has limited employment outside of the Univ. of Virginia. Richmond, VA, Pittsburgh, PA, and Ann Arbor, MI all intrigue me as well. I'm monitoring employment options in all of these towns. My current job is even more at risk than it was last year. I'm convinced that I was retained this year only because the company is closing one facility and consolidating staff in another building and they needed a couple of spare hands to oversee the process. Once the staff moves, there is no place for me in the new organization. I'm not too fussed about it. I've got cash from the house sale that I can live on if I have to.
But first...first I'm simply going to chill. I've had a truly hellish couple of years. Both my parents died. I was told I had cancer and had radical surgery, only to be told afterwards that it was something else. I was attacked by an honest to god, psychotic stranger in my own home. A hundred people in my department at work were fired. My house needed tens of thousands of dollars of repairs before I could finally move out to somewhere safe. I'm tired and frazzled! All I want to do for the next few months is veg, watch tv, read, and make art.
This entry was originally posted at http://saraqael.dreamwidth.org/13943.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
The condo I'm renting is cute, not perfect, but quite cozy and livable. It's so much easier to live in a small, single-story place. I no longer have to walk down 2 flights of stairs just to do laundry, for example. That seems a minor thing but after 17 years of hauling laundry up and down 2 flights of stairs, let me tell you, I am loving having everything on one level I no longer have a huge yard to take care of. No more multiple stories to keep clean. I have so many physical issues now that I can no longer maintain a big house by myself. I only plan to stay in this condo for a year, but I already know that I will only ever live in condos or single story rambler style houses from now on.
Next steps for me will be to start actively scouting out somewhere (here or elsewhere in the US) where I can both afford to live and get a job. There are lots of lovely places out there in the US where I'd love to live, but where there are no jobs, or only poorly paying jobs. Likewise, there are places with a lot of work (like the DC area) but which are too horrendously expensive for me to be able to afford to live on my single salary. I still am favoring a couple of places, namely Portland, OR and Ashville, NC. Portland seems like it has more employment opportunities but it appears to be becoming steadily more expensive. Ashville looks amazingly beautiful and may be more affordable, but employment there seems more limited. I'd love to move to Charlottesville, VA but it's bizarrely expensive and has limited employment outside of the Univ. of Virginia. Richmond, VA, Pittsburgh, PA, and Ann Arbor, MI all intrigue me as well. I'm monitoring employment options in all of these towns. My current job is even more at risk than it was last year. I'm convinced that I was retained this year only because the company is closing one facility and consolidating staff in another building and they needed a couple of spare hands to oversee the process. Once the staff moves, there is no place for me in the new organization. I'm not too fussed about it. I've got cash from the house sale that I can live on if I have to.
But first...first I'm simply going to chill. I've had a truly hellish couple of years. Both my parents died. I was told I had cancer and had radical surgery, only to be told afterwards that it was something else. I was attacked by an honest to god, psychotic stranger in my own home. A hundred people in my department at work were fired. My house needed tens of thousands of dollars of repairs before I could finally move out to somewhere safe. I'm tired and frazzled! All I want to do for the next few months is veg, watch tv, read, and make art.
This entry was originally posted at http://saraqael.dreamwidth.org/13943.html. Please comment there using OpenID.