Are you afraid of change?

I would like to be the person that embraces change, but I've often found it difficult.

The pandemic was particularly challenging in this regard — I stayed in my long-time home in SF, hopeful that the city would return to its vibrancy within a short period of time. The city seems to have bounced back, but I didn't anticipate I would change as much as I did — and that my relationship to my home and to the city would also change so much.

I lived in a home with several roommates to save money — renting your own place in SF tends to be much more expensive. The pandemic made living with acquaintances / strangers / people you don't have an intimate connection with... challenging. More time in the same space, more things to get annoyed with, more encroaching on each others' space, more kitchen issues. I feel that it brought out some of the worst in all of us.

I look back and wonder if maybe it would've been better to have gotten up and left more permanently. I traveled, subletting my room and other rooms I was responsible for, but I found the responsibility exhausting and weighty.

I prize the idea of being light — of being able to move freely and quickly. It's funny how staying put in one place for years creeps up on you — the accumulation of things, the attachment to people and places. I look back and see how weighed down I have been by my home and all the things I've accumulated.

I'm now in the process of shedding this weight. Selling big items like a motorcycle and a piano. The process of selling things is also exhausting (at least when you don't want to less at a massive loss, which may just be a necessary consequence at this point).

I am ready to be lighter, but I am afraid of what's next. I've become very comfortable and acquainted with my home and neighborhood — the peacefulness, the easy parking, the spaciousness of my room. It will be hard to leave.

I am attempting a new thought pattern: trust that something better out there will come. It's ok to leave.