Success / a new home

I got what I wanted, my own place to live.

An old flat in Oakland with two housemates. I moved in a week ago.

This flat has traffic noise and hardwood floors and wainscoting and bay windows and the best wind chimes in the world.

The windows are my favorite: I am lying in bed staring at the branches of a redwood tree; I am sitting in the dark in the living room with night air on my face, the best wind chimes in the world murmuring at me, moon and treetops and rooftops, the floodlit shipping cranes of West Oakland and the twinkling lights of San Francisco on the other side of the bay.

(I have seen every full moon of 2013 with my dear one.)

Moving out of one's parents' house is generally just a thing you're expected to do, maybe an event of some note but I guess not a surprising or unusual accomplishment for a twenty-four-year-old person. It is for me, though.

I have spent most of my legal adult life so far concentrating on becoming a functioning, mentally healthy person and hoping that becoming a person in possession of a bachelor's degree would not turn out to be a mutually exclusive pursuit. Consequently, things like holding down a permanent job (any job, let alone a Career), moving out, etc. are relatively untested waters, and accordingly, relatively intimidating to me even when you don't factor in old habits of considering oneself unsuitable for life.

So I decided that's what I would do this year — I would secure a source of income that would allow me to move out, and I would move out.

All of which is to say, I am basking right now in the warmth of my own ordinary competence, of having tangible proof of that competence, and basking also in the specific loveliness of this new home where I have landed. Absolutely basking.