I found a home, er...a studio!

I am signing a lease tomorrow on a cute little studio. Little as in really little…but also very cute and charming. I am so excited to move in! It's two blocks from work, close to the street car and the bus. It’s small and old and it has hardwood floors and milk boxes and old fashioned phones and lots of sunlight. And oh my word, how I have missed sunlight this year. I’ll be living by myself for the first time in the history of my quarter-century life. Part of me is terrified to live by myself but the other part of me is pretty stoked to spend some time with me in my own space. I have always had roommates and most of the time lots of them. I’ve lived with 11 girls. I’ve lived with 8 girls. I lived with 5 girls. I’ve lived with one other girl. I love having roommates, especially when they are all your favorite people. I’ve been blessed to be able to live with all my favorite people and even work with a majority of them at the same coffee shop. It was heavenly to come home from a long exhausting day and have someone making dinner, someone watching Ellen, someone napping on the couch, someone studying down the street. Someone ready to play. There was always something fun to do and always someone fun to hang out with. It made my entire social life effortless.

Portland has been challenging and a bit of a reality check at times with my lack of community and circle of awesome-ness always around. It felt a bit like a two-by-four to the face, until I realized that community doesn’t always come so easy. I’m excited to challenge my hermit self and get out and find some good Portlanders to be my people. I’ll have to be intentional in making plans and stretching myself, which will be good for me. I can tell. I’ll be in the city and closer to people. I do love people. It reminds me of a Ben Lee lyric, “thinking bout the city, it’s living proof that people need to be together.” People do need to be together. We’re created to be together. And that’s why I’m living by myself…near lots and lots of people…ha. In any case, I’m excited for this year and quality time with me in my new city.

Side note: I’m still reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I’m the slowest reader ever, because I insist on reading at least four books at a time. But here’s a great quote,

“The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful…Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.” –Milan Kundera