moving is weird
around i got the news that my family and i would have to be moving house around the end of the next month. it felt pretty sudden, honestly! (though i obviously won't be divulging into the details). we'd been living in that house for around 3-ish years and weren't expecting to have to move for at least a few more. we've spent a lot of time and effort making that house feel like our own; i spent a lot of time building up a creative space in my room (dubbed the "bnnystudio") that would let creating feel as fun and effortless as i could make it.
but, of course, life happens and there's not much to do about it other than roll with the punches! i thought i'd put down a few experiences and thoughts on it:
boxes
it's pretty cliché to say, but yeah, you really don't realize how much stuff you have until you have to put them all into fixed-size cardboard boxes. i always thought of myself as somebody that doesn't have a ton of superfluous stuff (i like finding ways of working with what i have, DIY 'til i die mindset!) but as it turns out, i apparently like to hold onto things: really old Christmas and birthday cards from people i haven't talked to in years, electronics that don't even really work but i swear i can figure out how to fix, literal, actual rocks. figuring out what's worth keeping and what isn't was a surprisingly a painful process, and not even because of whatever emotional attachment i have to these things, but just having to sift through the sheer amount of everything and figuring out where to start and stop, ADHD, executive dysfunction shenanigans, blah blah.
one thing i didn't account for, stupidly lmao, was the weight that these boxes were going to be, as it was going to be me, my dad, and just a few family members and friends helping out and moving stuff into and out of a van. i never really thought about it in passing, but books? heavy. like, as fuck lol. i like keeping like-things together in the same space since it helps me with remembering where things are but that meant that i threw all of the books i owned into one box. same thing happened with all of the vinyl records our family's collected: all packed up in one box. and vinyl? heavy. as fuck.
after having moved all of our boxes into the van we drove straight to the new place to immediately start moving them back out again. it's weird how annoying that felt, since this was the whole point, moving the stuff from here to there, but it kind of felt like we were undoing all the hard work of carrying things into the van and practicing Tetris-like skills to try and fit as much as possible in that space, in a funny, non-serious kind of way, of course.
ouchies
one thing about the new house itself is it's a bit more "stair-heavy" than our previous, and actually right at the front door there's already flight of stairs to get to the rest of the house. moving heavy boxes on their own is one thing, having to move them up stairs is definitely another. the feeling after it was all over and everything was now in the house was a weird mix of satisfaction and bittersweetness, like those scenes in movies where they say "welp! there's no going back now!"
the days following were expectedly SORE. even though the initial day of arrival felt like such a success, there was still a lot more to do, because things in boxes have to eventually turn into things that are no longer in boxes, and some of those boxes would have to be brought up even more stairs to reach the rooms they were meant for. so i took a day off from school work to handle the brunt of this. my entire body hurt the whole time, but that was to be expected from all the work from the previous day—i'm not exactly the most active person in the world lol.
turns out, days later, i got sick! probably from hauling boxes around in the rain (yeah, Mother Nature decided it was a good day to start raining lmao). moreover, in the following days where i started recovering from my sickness, i noticed that i was still feeling a very specific kind of pain in my leg, which was very apparent when walking down stairs. eventually, i learned that i had gotten IT band syndrome (yay!), most definitely from the strenuous activity from moving day, and especially because of the damn stairs lol. walking to and from classes on those days was quite the pain, and on days off i learned how to DIY an ice pack with a plastic bag, water, some rubbing alcohol to help along the healing process. maybe about 2–3 weeks later was when my leg became fully functional again, and i'd like to keep it that way from here on out lol; that period sucked.
moved in
it's been a full semester since having moved in now! i initially told myself that, while i'd be focusing more on my studies this time around, i'd still occasionally update this site and blog, but it looks like i'm very bad at multi-tasking lmao. i actually started writing this sometime last month but then got sidetracked. at the very least though, i did notice an improvement in academic performance and also a lot less stress from trying to juggle both creative projects and school work at the same time. i'll probably always be at least a little disappointed that i can't work on everything, always, and at the same time, but i think i'm learning to plan and prioritize a bit more.
i'm bad at ending these types of "life update" posts lol. i hope you're doing well and that your holidays have been good! here's a demo i made in the time away from this site. take care!