The plan that failed

I mentioned that I had a vague plan for altering my life and was waiting for confirmation. Well, after living on tenterhooks and waiting and waiting, for meetings and the powers at be to have their say, sadly, my plan failed.

I tried to present a case to my current employer that I could do my job remotely and only come into the office for one day a week, which would allow me to live quite a distance away. My manager was unfazed and quite amenable to the idea (initially when I asked about the possibilities of working remotely, his response was that coming in one day a week should be enough), which gave me reason to hope. But when it went up the chain of management, the least I could reduce office time to was three days a week. This is not so useful. I can’t live so far away if I have to commute for three days a week. So, I came home and cried, and called my Mum and cried. My dream shattered and the perfect plan I had created for living how I want to live crumbled in a heap.

So, I am now right back where I started with trying to come up with some other idea. But, I have to trust it to God that that wasn’t how it was all meant to work out and there will be some other way.

In all this decision-making and re-evaluating I have decided on two things:

(a) I don’t want to live in Sydney any more

(b) I don’t want to live in share housing any more

It is probably best I have come to both those conclusions because living in Sydney and not living in share housing are more or less mutually exclusive, and they each influenced the other.

When I tried to write a list of reasons why I stay in Sydney, given the cost of housing, there were not too many things on it. (I don’t have any family here, I have few good friends left that I see with any kind of regularity (and some that I do are leaving themselves), I am not involved in any ministries this year at church to which I am indispensable and which I couldn’t do elsewhere, I am not rapt in my current job, the rent is too expensive (and buying is all but out of the question), there are no men here who are asking me out ... and that is about all the reasons I can think of.) When I think about how I spend my free time, which is largely pottering around by myself, I don’t need to be in the most expensive city in the country to do it. And having now reached the age that I pretend people don’t know I am, I am too old to continue trying to find random flatmates, and I want a real home for myself. I don’t want to go on living holed up in my bedroom like a teenager reading books because the TV is on in the living room. I want to live in the living room – to sit on my couches and play music, to do crochet and read books and leave books and crochet scattered about, to invite people over when I would like to invite them over.

So, there is my internet catharsis and reasoning. And I now need to find some other way to make these life alterations.