Limbo

I read my friend Missy’s blog last week and she had a very insightful post about packing and organizing for a life that hasn’t even started yet. After college, like Missy, I started buying household items for a future apartment or house, and packing them up along with other personal belongings hoping that someday soon I would be moving away and on my own.

Later that same day I got home from work and stood in my room looking around at what I have collected over the months since moving back home from college in mid-2004. I realized I had bought a lot of stuff for a future residence. I bought a big boy bed, a bookshelf, a chair, a computer desk, numerous household decorations such as pictures, vases, lamps (I seriously have more lamps than I can shake a stick at – it’s kind of a vice of mine. I love cool lamps… it’s weird, I know), artsy stuff from Ikea, mirrors, and candles. I had such grandiose dreams – living at home with my mom for a short period of time and then moving out with a roommate after having lived at home for 6 months and living happily ever after. That dream soon faded away into oblivion and I stopped buying and organizing for something that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

After living at home for a while, I began to realize that I would not have the ability to move out on my own because a.) I had no more options for roommates as all my friends had found other people to live with, and b.) I was not making enough money to live on my own without a roommate because rent is so outrageous for a one bedroom. Living at home really isn’t all that bad. I can’t complain because my set up is really quite ideal. Cheap rent, I have the entire lower level of my mom’s house to myself, free cable, free internet, free utilities… and I can close off half of the lower level where my bedroom and bathroom are from the rest of the house. And besides, I’m practically living at Matt’s apartment anyway, so I am hardly ever actually living at my house.

I had been off the home decorating kick and buying things for a while until this past weekend when Matt and I went and toured some of the homes in the Parade of Homes booklet. He and I looked at some townhouses in Woodbury. If he and I end up staying in Minnesota, we would more than likely get a townhouse – and just looking for fun gave me the itch to start anticipating a move again – and the move would not even happen until October or November. Then Monday night my mom and I went to Target together and she bought my sister some new dishes for her birthday and she convinced me to buy this lamp (like I need anymore lamps!) that was on clearance. We finished splurging on household items and went home and I started collecting items from my old bedroom upstairs and organizing them into big Rubbermaid containers.

I don’t know if it’s me just wanting to move, or if it’s my Bree VanDeKamp/Martha Stewart obsession with keeping things organized, or if it’s just the Spring Cleaning phase coming into play… Since I can’t quite put my finger on what the deal is, it makes me feel like I’m in limbo – and it’s not just the whole living situation above, but my career and future as well. There are some things I know I am certain of at this point, but not everything. I think a lot of people my age are in limbo at this time of their life. I guess I just have to wait and see what comes my way and hope for the best.