I keep thinking I want to blog and I keep pushing it aside. I’m not sure why. There are a lot of things I’d like to talk about, but I don’t know where to start.
Yeah, I know. Let’s start at the beginning. But I have no clue where that beginning would be.
So I’m just going to jump in and share some thoughts. Maybe that’ll help.
There’s a lot happening right now and also there’s not much happening at all.
We’re still looking at houses, but they’re either not what we’re looking for or already taken or there’s something else wrong with it.
I’d like to be all cool about that. After all, we still have a roof over our head if we don’t find a house. We’re still renting that little apartment and can keep doing that for as long as we need to.
The apartment is exactly what we need. It has a bed, a kitchen, and a bathroom. If it was ours, I’d change about everything, but it’s functional. We spent most of our time outside anyway. But lately, I find myself feeling… ungrounded? lost? I don’t know how to put it.
Not myself. That may be it.
Last week T. traveled to Bonaire for a day and I was home alone. I didn’t feel so well, so after I did some shopping and finished my daily cleaning routine, I decided to give myself a day off. I spent the rest of that day on my bed, watching youtube channels like this one, this one and this one. Yes. I know. Not good.
Why would I waste time watching clean-with-me video’s and vlogs from cute thirty-year-old girls with cute young children (or pregnant with another cute one)? I’m almost 48 and my children are all grown-up. I’m in a completely different stage of life.
It took me a few days of being annoyed with myself to realize that I’m having some empty nest issues here.
Our youngest girl moved out over two years ago and I thought I was coping with that just fine. But she was working with T. at that time, so she was over at our house every weekday. And the other girls visited often. Now they’re 5000 miles away and we’ll see them only a few times a year. We do talk on the phone a lot, but it’s still different from having a noisy house full of people. So my empty nest syndrome only just really kicked in (having D. over for a week was fun, but also made us realize what we were missing).
And then this empty nest… is not a nest at all. It’s just a place to stay while we’re hoping to find a real home. And that’s driving me crazy too, because if you take away the glitter and glamour (ahem) of being a published author, blogger, editor, bookkeeper etc. I’m just the simple housewife I’ve always been. I’m not happy to admit it (because I’d like to be more adventurous than this and I’m on a tropical island so why can’t I just be extremely happy about that, for goodness sake) but I miss having a house to take care of. I know it sounds boring and old-fashioned, but I like cleaning, decorating, organizing, decluttering and cooking. That’s who I am. And I miss being me. So sue me.
This blog post isn’t leading to anything and doesn’t really solve my problems, but it feels good to get it off my chest. We’ve scheduled another house viewing for Wednesday morning. Maybe that’ll be the one.
Now if you’ll excuse me. I think I’m going to buy some containers to reorganize our tiny cupboard.
(picture is a random cute house, not for sale)