A Few Thoughts on the Anniversary of Moving into my Home (Also the Anniversary of the Disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, Which is Unrelated and not Mentioned)

So, here’s a flashback for your Friday.  A year ago, right now, I was at my old apartment in Portland, Maine, getting the last of my stuff from TedPlace and bringing it to TedHouse, my home in Hallowell.  I had moved because I was tired of the one-hour commute, each way, to my job at the Togus VA Regional Office in Augusta.  And now, this evening, I’m going to go out and have a nice, but simple dinner to observe both the anniversary of moving and the final paycheck from that job.

Now, I’m not a huge fan of regret.  I like to process through the reason things happen and move forward.  And, indeed, things do happen for a reason.  In my life, most things—the things I have control over—have happened because I decided to do them.  It’s quite simple.  I’m not much of a spiritual man.  I moved to Hallowell to save myself ten hours of commuting each week.  Now, I’ve also dropped 40 hours of working from my schedule, at least temporarily. 

No regrets, though.  Hallowell is a wonderful little town, and I love TedHouse.  But there’s something about this that has made me reflect on the last two moves I’ve made.  I moved to Portland, in 2011 to be with the woman I loved.  One year after moving in together, she was moving out.  We had a difference that we could not reconcile.  It wouldn’t work.  Again, no regrets.  Our relationship was wonderful, while it lasted, and I loved living in Portland.  I stayed for two years after she moved out of our apartment.  It was my choice to move and to stay. 

Then, after three years of commuting from Portland paired with mandatory overtime, I was approaching burnout.  I had been dating someone, and after breaking up, I felt that there was nothing keeping me in Portland.  So, I moved to have more time to myself away from the job that I once really enjoyed.  My commute was down to 15 minutes, but I very soon fell into a pretty significant depression.  It happens.  I have mental problems.

I look around my home and see the remnants of that depression in the form of projects that never happened.  My home is quite habitable without having completed them.  I had just hoped to at least move the floor lamp from my kitchen back to the living room and fix the wiring to install my awesome new—well, now year-old—pendant lights over my Tedmade butcher block table.

Again, do I regret anything?  No.  My depression and that job were on a collision course that I could not avoid.  I just may have to start thinking things through a little more thoroughly before I make any major changes.  I hope to start the grad school in a month.  But at the end of that, will I be able to stay here at TedHouse in Hallowell?  I don’t know.

I do know that I’ll have to be sure about any job that may require me to move from TedHouse.  The last two parts of my life that inspired me to move—a romance and a job—both ended within a year of those moves.

Just something for me to think about before I do something regrettable.