We haven't quite been in the new house for a week yet, but I do feel myself gradually getting comfortable with it. We have unfinished painting projects, and we've yet to get any photos on the wall, but we're heading in the right direction. While there's still work to do there, I'm really happy with my office/mancave.
The weird thing is that I feel a certain reluctance to really embrace this as my home. Home is a different concept than where you live. For many years, home is what I associated with safety and stability. In 2009, I threw out that association when we moved to Seattle. Discovering how awesome Seattle was, I started to feel that the sense of home, and the associated perception of safety and stability, had tied me down in a way that made me feel embarrassed and ashamed. I really felt like I missed out on something I can't quite describe. I still carry that with me, especially after going back to the house I couldn't sell (even if that was not motivated by "home" at all).
Settling in here, finally, after five moves in the last four and a half years, means accepting some level of stability, and I have to work out in my head that it doesn't mean stagnation. A little bit of consistency is good for Simon. I'm mostly confident that there's enough work around here, and even if there isn't, remote work is getting to be more common. For at least the next few years, it's unlikely I'll face a negative equity or depreciation slide, so we could move if there was a really good reason. Perhaps most obviously, it took some nuts to move down here for a contract gig in the first place, and that's about as non-safe as it gets.
I'm trying though. I think as the weeks go on, I'll be able to embrace the sense of home. We seem to have a lot of engaging neighbors, we hear train whistles, there's a zip line down the street and we have our very own palm trees. It's a pretty cool place to live, not a weakness.
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