Notes from the Couch on Moving Day: Finding Home 3.1
Hello, Tiny Letter friends. Welcome to the first real Finding Home of 2019. (I blame the winter blahs. It's kind of hard to write when you just want to hibernate all the time.) Anyway! How the heck are you? After a lot of cold and rain (and did I mention blah?), we finally have a good covering of snow in this corner of New England, which somehow makes winter... slightly better?
I feel like I have way too many things I want to write about, but... well, I stayed up super late last night writing a little bit about moving , even though it is the shortest move of my life. And I thought I'd share those late night scribblings with you. Plus read on for some blogs/writing links, a little peek at what I'm working on, and books + other things helping me survive winter.
It's well past midnight and I am sitting in the dark of the still furnished half of my apartment. It's a moving weekend, and though it's the shortest move of my lfe -- from the second to the third floor of a multi-family home -- moving is still moving, after all.
Friday was spent loading up boxes and hauling them upstairs, emptying their contents, and heading back down to gather more. The kitchen was my pet project of the day... a million little things hidden in random spaces. Dishes that maybe get used twice a year. Gadgets that are just useful enough to justify their place in the house but used so infrequently they get exiled to the cabinet above the sink. An assortment of spices and vinegars and the occasional bag of stale marshmallows or three-years-out-of-date Worcestershire sauce. (what IS that stuff for anyway? I bought it for a recipe and never knew what to do with the rest.)
Tomorrow, a few people will come over and help us finish the move, mostly the bigger furniture, and the living room and bedroom we left intact. I know I should go to bed. But tonight, same as any other move, I feel this urge to stay up late in the silence and savor the closing of a chapter.
Marking time and space wasn't always this important to me. Thirty years a land where a sort of eternal summer vibe hangs in the tropical air might do that to you. And yet maybe something in me has always felt the weight of a change between clear life markers, whether that was graduating high school or college, starting or leaving a job, or buying a car. When change is on the horizon, I find myself trying to slow down each day. contemplate the last things that are coming. Maybe the last time I sit in a particular classroom or walk the hallway to my desk or have coffee with this friend.
A part of me imagines holding the time in my hands. Not tightly. Not in a death grip. Gently, letting it slip by. Gently, with gratitude.
Maybe that's why I'm staying up late in this apartment. Once we realized we didn't enjoy the experience of upstairs neighbors, I knew it was a sort of temporary holding place. But we lived a lot of life here in two years. We lived through a job change and depression, and for me it has been a place to land as I have gone to therapy, pondered my future, and learned more about who I am and who I am becoming.
So for that, I stayed up late to write this. The probably silly thing is I'm not going far. This ceiling will be my floor tomorrow night. The space upstairs is pretty much the same right down to the paint colors, with just enough subtle differences that I'll have to adjust to. (for one, there's a fake drawer where my beloved spice drawer is supposed to be and I'm having a hard time with that, tbh)
It's important to mark time and space. We do it at graduations and weddings and going away parties. Perhaps we should do it when we're changing apartments too.
Moving is moving, after all.
THINGS I WROTE THIS WINTER
I haven't done this in far too long, buuuuut... I have joined a book launch team! Back in my early days of blogging, I loved reviewing new books, and I'm making an effort to get into that again... starting with Emily P. Freeman's forthcoming book The Next Right Thing! I've been semi-secretly a fangirl of just about everything she does, particularly because her gentle, grounded, spiritual director vibe is exactly what I appreciate in Christian writers right now. Here's a little blog post about why I'm excited for the book and all the sweet preorder bonuses that come with it! (Book review coming soon!)
Speaking of books, here's a roundup of 3 Books I Loved in January. The February edition is coming soon! Like, I'm gonna start drafting it right now. 👍🏼
AND ICYMI...
A friendly reminder that my poetry book Ruins & Kingdoms is now available on Kindle! Just $2.99 for some poems in your pocket! And if you're like "Jen this book is old news," you're right. But if you've read it and would consider leaving an honest review, this indie poet would be eternally grateful.
5 THINGS I LOVED THIS WINTER
1) This tea. Look, I'm a coffee girl through and through, but because drinking caffeine all day can only lead to no good and I need to stay warm somehow, winter is a time to embrace the tea.
2) But speaking of coffee... I got this nifty ceramic pourover for Christmas (thanks Mom!) and I don't want to make coffee any other way right now.
3) New albums from Switchfoot, Jess Ray, Maggie Rogers, and Imogen Heap's soundtrack to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. (It's the ambient instrumental Heapy goodness I didn't know I needed.)
4) Finally reading Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, the perfect extremely long alternate history plus magic and footnotes novel for winter. I've put off starting it because we have a massive heavy hardcover and the size intimidated me, but I've really loved hanging out in this world. (and Susanna Clarke does a spot on impression fo 19th century novels)
5) Checking Mumford & Sons off my concert bucket list... in Providence! Acoustic banjoy Mumford? Electric Mumford? I'm here for all of it. And if it's not cool to like them... um...
And so, I'm gonna click that little Send Now button, lest I once again procrastinate and endlessly tweak this letter and fail to send on out for yet another month. The end. :)
Happy March, y'all.
~Jen