EPT
Home is Where your Wi-Fi Autoconnects
I recently moved into a new apartment with my old friend Julien. We met on the first day of Middle School and have been friends ever since. Although moving in with a new roommate always entails some level of surprise, I'm looking forward to living with Julien. We'll have good conversations, neither of us makes a lot of noise at night, and we both know how to cook. I'm more worried about bothering him than the reverse taking place, so it's a good situation for me. I just moved in my mattress and several boxes, and even though I'm not quite unpacked, I've gotten enough stuff out of containers that I can comfortably head to bed. Dinner was just fried rice since our kitchen is only partially unpacked. The stove works, though!
Since we're both young guys, we don't have great credit (read: we don't have credit at all) so the housing hunt was a bit rough. We applied to live in two places, and both times people with better credit got them. This time, though, we were lucky, for a couple of reasons. First, the real estate agent who was trying to rent the place was a young looking dude (late 20s) who seemed to like us when we first met him. Second, the previous tenants had broken their 1-year lease after just a few months and moved out, and were constantly pestering the property management firm, since they'd have to pay until new tenants were found. Lastly, it seemed like the agent, Tony, was less than fully competent.
Julien and I had an advantage: we were ready to move in right away. Sure, the lady with the child and the two old people both probably had better credit, but they couldn't move in until late September. We could go in right now! We also made a point of chatting Tony up a bit, plus applying for the place and authorizing a credit report immediately. He only wanted to know how many people we were (2), whether we had any pets (no), and when we could move in (right away). He seemed satisfied with our answers. When we went in to sign the papers the day after Labor Day, Tony looked hungover. His friend had gotten married the previous day.
I'm not the only guy going through some life changes right now. My father and his long-time girlfriend have split up, and my brother is still in a transitional period after he and his wife got divorced a couple years ago. I'm there for them, though, just as they've always been there for me. I sat down with my dad and talked to him about his finances, even though he's the one with the MBA. I didn't give him any advice he hadn't already thought of, but he's upset and hearing things from someone who's not can help. For a long time now, my father has effectively been in retirement-- still doing some work as a real estate agent, but otherwise relaxing and enjoying life. He'll be moving to the downstairs unit and renting the top floor suite of the building he owns, living off the income from the property. He's still active, still vital, unusually so for a man his age.
I'm still waiting for this new state of affairs to become "normal", for it to stop being a time of change and become the status quo. Maybe part of it is not having my Wi-Fi set up yet, or still waiting for some chairs and a table for the living room. Taking a leaf out of my dad's book, I've drawn scale diagrams of the living room and my bedroom on graph paper, and am moving around smaller, cut-out bits of paper that are the same dimensions as pieces of furniture. It's certainly easier to do than physically moving furniture around, especially since I haven't bought any yet.
As long as I still move furniture around on paper, as long as I don't know how my room will be laid out or what my new routine will be yet, I suppose it's still a time of change. It's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just unsettling.
Good luck in your new place!
