Launch: Settling In

One again, procrastination has gotten the better of me and I'm sitting at the kitchen table at my parents' house churning out a blog at the very last second. Since the last time I wrote, I've officially moved into my apartment! Woohoo! I'm not living with my parents anymore! This, in and of itself, is a huge accomplishment, one that I'm extremely proud of. I've been actually sleeping there, in my own bed, in my own room, in my own apartment, for almost two weeks. I think I've gotten used to it, to an extent, the way I got used to dorm rooms and sleeping in bunks at summer camp, but it's definitely not home yet.

Part of the reason for that is that I still haven't moved most of my furniture from my bedroom at home to the apartment. My bedroom is mostly empty, save for the bed (full-sized with wheels on the frame so it slides around on the hardwood floors whenever I move in the middle of the night), a few laundry baskets of clean laundry, and several boxes of books that I have yet to unpack which are currently serving as tables for my lamps. It's sufficient for now, but my mom keeps reminding me that getting completely settled in and making it my own will make me a lot happier in the long run. Now to find a time when my parents aren't busy on a day when I'm also free so we can haul bureaus and bookcases up those three flights of stairs.

The best part of being away from home, so far, is my roommate. Let's call her Roomie, for convenience's sake. I met Roomie online about three years ago through my personal blog, and when we found out we lived two towns away from one another we immediately had to meet for lunch and have never looked back. We're ridiculously compatible in so many ways, both easygoing and open-minded, both a little messy, and both kind of addicted to the internet. Even when we're just chilling on the couch, both glued to our laptops, we can share what's going on and understand the context, which is something my parents never really got. We laugh a lot. And we're both at the same places in our lives. This is her first time living away from home (other than college of course) too, and while she's got a career started (she's a preschool teacher), we can commiserate on nearly everything. We're both helpless with the opposite sex, we both hate doing dishes, and we were both eccstatic about the shower curtain we bought, which features a map of the world. I couldn't have wished for a better roommate.

So now that that's all out of the way, I guess it's time for step two, which is finding a better-paying job. I just got my review at the bookstore where I've been working for about a year, and while I scored "skilled" in every area, because of these economic times they can't give me a raise. I make $8.25 an hour. There's something to be said for having a job I absolutely love, but I clearly can't work there forever. So there it is, right in front of me. That next hurdle to jump over. The dreaded job search. I've bought several books at my bookstore on finding the job that's right for you and all that, but have yet to crack them open. Damn you, procrastination.

~Fae