Where to Now?
It’s official. I’ve formally declined to renew the lease on my current apartment, leaving me in renter’s limbo. I’m certainly not unhoused, but I don’t exactly have a home anymore. Frankly, this place hasn’t felt like home to me in quite some time, but as I said, it’s now official.
I need to find a new place within about a month. On the surface, it’s a scary time to relocate, what with all the economic and political uncertainties and strife, but that would still exist even if I had renewed my lease. Sitting still won’t help matters any.
Technically, I have a little longer than a month, but it will be a real squeeze if I don’t have something locked down by mid-April. That’s definitely not enough time to properly look for a house, so I start apartment hunting for serious come Monday.
I think I can get a much bigger place for cheaper in the suburbs while enjoying an overall better quality of life. Such is the dream, anyway. I get arguments from friends and family like, “Why would you move out of the city? Won’t you miss the theater? And the restaurants? And all that material for street photography?” etc.
These are strange arguments coming from anyone who knows me even slightly. Not once in this lifetime have I expressed an interest in The Theatre. At all. I loved concerts and lounges, but a grievous ear infection left me with tinnitus bad enough that I can’t comfortably attend concerts or even loud family gatherings.12 I’ve long been candid in my dislike for dining at restaurants. I don’t complain about it, but I’m very open about only dining out as a politeness and social obligation. And I’ve been taking pictures of a city that’s fallen into ruin for the last four or five years.
Meanwhile, what I actually enjoy, for me, is peace and quiet, riding my bike along quiet streets at night, and the occasional casual gardening—none of which I have had opportunity to experience in six years. So, I don’t understand why anyone would expect me to stay here if I don’t have to.
Footnotes
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All of my family gatherings are loud, indeed. There are so many of us. ↩
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Anyone who’s been to a loud concert is familiar with the experience of tinnitus ringing in the ears. But tinnitus can actually sound lots of different ways. (Mine is precisely like the ringing in your ears after a concert if you modulated the volume a bit with a fast sine wave). The thing people don’t always know is that tinnitus can also be physically painful—even when it’s not especially loud. That bean grinder at the local coffee shop? It feels like a rasp has been jabbed into my ear and someone is wriggling it around. Only not quite as painful. The important take away is that I don’t simply hear an annoying ringing in my ears. I can feel it and it hurts. ↩