Last year I wrote a blog about what moving taught me. One year later I realise that moving again has taught me a lof of other things. This has a lot to do with my habits and how I live my daily life when things are “comfortable”, so to speak. But when you’re in the middle of looking for a new place to live, find one and have to start packing to move, life isn’t normal for quite some time. And when life is not normal I start dropping good habits really fast and that’s something I want to explore in this blog.

Too tired to work out and tired, because I don’t work out

The first habit I dropped was going to the gym 4-5 times a week. When you’re working your day job and need to continue working on your moving project, you end up spending a lot of hours “adulting” and once you’re done, it’s time to head off to bed, only to do the same thing the next day, until all the days start to become one big blur. At some point I didn’t have a clue what day it was, exactly, and I was glad when it was the weekend, so I could just focus on one big thing at the same time.

The thing is that going to the gym gives me a lot of energy, but I didn’t go because I felt drained and I probably only made it much worse for myself than it had to be, if I had gone. This is one of those typical vicious cycles you can get into. I am glad that I finally went to the gym again today. It felt really good, even if I didn’t even push myself too hard.

I may not be as Stoic as I deem myself to be

Although I usually don’t have much problems keeping a Stoic mindset, I found myself becoming increasingly overtaken by my emotions as time went on during our big move. Of course, these are stressful times and a lack of proper sleep doesn’t help either. Because everything just became so blurry I often found myself quite angry at our old landlord, mostly because they constantly tried to put blame on us when we knew damn well that most of the things that are wrong with our old apartment are due to lack of maintenance and repairs. Bren and I both can’t stand injustice, so this often led to a lot of pent up rage inside both of us, which was not good for both of us.

Another thing that was thrown back at me was that I often tell others not to be bothered with things outside their control, yet I had a hard time practicing what I preach in this case. I have started my journey into Stoicism about five years ago, so I still have a lot to learn. While I often don’t have trouble applying this mindset, I failed to do so under a lot of stress, so I still have a long way to go.

You can’t stop and just have to carry on

One thing that I did during our move and dealing with all the adversity with our old landlord was never just quitting and just carrying on, every single day. What really helped was seeing Bren’s determination and her attitude towards moving. We made a very long To-Do list and every day new things would be added, but a lot of older items would be crossed out by then as well. I was inspired by Bren and how she handles things in times like these in such a way that it gave me the strength to continue doing all the stuff that needed to be done. And if I’ve learned anything from moving again with her it’s that it’s important to keep going and making sure that every day you do the things that matter and to keep the promises you made. In a world filled with liars and cheats it’s best not to lower yourself to their standards. Yet, you should always keep an old axiom in mind: “Do no harm, but take no shit.” That’s exactly what we did, as a team, together. And it’s one of my main reasons I love Bren so much. She’s fair and honest and you’ll always know where you stand with her. A lot of people may consider this blunt, but I find it refreshing, especially when I hear men complain about how a lot of women always speak in riddles. I’ve had my fair share of that in the past too and I can tell that this is much, much better.

Curve balls aren’t uncatchable

So, yeah, these have been some very tumultuous times, but we’ve managed to get through it with little to no damage to ourselves. The move has been stressful, but it has been worth every step of the way and I’m really glad we’re in a much better place now. The weird thing is that we ended up paying for a place that is bigger, but costs a little bit less. This just goes to show how bad the situation was and how we’ve been swindled. I haven’t even started on how bad it even really was, but I’ll probably tell that someday soon. I hope we can prevent other people from becoming duped too, because I wouldn’t want anyone else to become victim to a company as the one we rented our previous home from. But for now, we’re going to focus on the positive things in life again. Building on our new home and our future, together.

Stay safe and healthy out there!

Jeffrey