Stop the World!

It's been close to three months since I've written. Everything keeps moving and I'm fighting hard to keep going forward at the same pace as my life. Let me tell you about it.

• I went to Los Angeles and did my part to help with The Justice Conference, an event that World Relief helped found just a few years ago.
• After LA, I headed up to Seattle for five days of vacation. Yay for a $120 trip to Seattle!
• Upon my return, I learned that my roommate was moving out and I began the hunt for a new roommate to share my apartment. The hunt was, ultimately, unsuccessful, mostly because I didn't feel like living with someone I'd met through Craigslist.
• My promotion, that took effect February 1, was announced to the organization. I moved up from Administrative Assistant to Marketing Coordinator. 
• I learned that a friend from work had bought a house in Baltimore and was going to be looking for a tenant. I jumped on that train.
• Once the decision was made to move into the city, I started sorting, purging, and packing my belongings. I also started daydreaming about building my own tiny house one day and took a few steps to start saving toward that end. Building a tiny house will also involve even more sorting and purging over the next few years.
• Throughout April, I moved things to my new home. It took two full carloads and one cargo van to move all my things, including my furniture. For some, this doesn't sound like much but I'd like to be rid of at least one more carload, maybe both, by the end of 2015.
• Last weekend was the final move - furniture and the last few boxes. On Monday, I spent about seven hours cleaning my old place. It's amazing how messy things can get after almost 2 1/2 years.

Things I haven't been doing include running (or any other exercise) or eating healthfully or socializing with people. Instead, when I wasn't packing or cleaning, I was lying around, watching various television shows, and trying to pretend I didn't need anything from anyone.

I wasn't keen on living in the city but there are some really good things about it, chief among them that I will be able to commute by foot every day. Soon enough, I plan to be a run commuter, making my morning trip to work my mileage for the day. I'm looking into a good pack for this purpose so that I can comfortably transport my clothes, breakfast, and lunch for each day.

Another good thing is that there are no fast food restaurants on my route. And, even if there were, I am much more reluctant to walk into a fast food place than to patronize the drive-thru. So, I'll be avoiding a lot of my poorest eating habits. For the moment, we don't have a kitchen in the house, so I'm pretty much eating raw veggies and fruit and pita chips because they're easy.

Also, I'm considering going car-less. It's much more expensive to have my car in the city and it's getting old enough that sooner or later it's going to need some major repair or another that will wipe out my savings. If that happens before I decide to sell it, I'm going to donate it somewhere instead of getting it repaired.

Life is changing and I feel like I've finally let go of the illusion of control enough to be moving at the same speed it has been. Stay tuned for more updates.