A Place to Hang My Hat - An Erstwhile Apartment

I fully expected to move around a bit once I moved to Chicago. My first apartment was a reasonably sized studio in Rogers Park that lasted for about seven months before I realized I wasn't ready to live alone. (Sudden loss will do that to you) At the same time, it was a healthy distance from friends, a social life, work, and countless other things that I really enjoyed doing. So I moved into my second apartment in Wrigleyville.

It was a garden unit, which meant few windows, low ceilings, and a far higher proportion of spiders to living space than I was initially prepared to accept. My bedroom didn't actually have any windows, which made for an interesting devolution of my internal clock - I could wake up anywhere between 4:30 am and 1:30 pm without any guessing at all. I came to overly rely on my alarm clock...which isn't good when you know where the snooze button is. With my full time job being as a server, complete with irregular hours, sleep came hard. In addition, the sense of living underground without the luxuries of being a hobbit makes for a depressing living.

That being said, the apartment did have some perks. I was across the street from one of the greatest sports facilities in all of America. I was close to public transit and to grocery stores. I was a quick walk to most of my friend's abodes. All in all, it wasn't a bad place to live for three plus years.

However, after three years, the negatives start to outweigh the positives. My grieving period lasted for a while, but eventually started to settle as I regained the inner strength to push forward with new projects. Comfort is an easy fallback for anyone - but at some point, you just have to move forward with change, with different experiences. It's scary, but if I never did anything scary, I would never have left Ohio.

Which means that I'm writing this blog from a Starbucks down the street from my latest apartment.

After several months of agonizing about where to live, I came to two decisions - I was ready to get out of that shithole apartment in Wrigley, and I was ready to live alone. It took a while to reach that decision, but with stable employment for the first time in years (since post-college really), I was ready for the challenges that come with living an adult life.

The search for a place was a little protracted, but ultimately wasn't that painful. I viewed a total of five apartments, and settled on the last place I viewed. Within a couple of weeks, I had a studio apartment secured near Belmont and Halsted, close to the Red Line, the Halsted bus, my favorite record store, my favorite book store, and not one but two Chipotles. Last Wednesday, my friends Alex, Leigh, and Catherine helped me load up my belongings into a cramped U-Haul truck and then unload me into my new home for the next 1+ years.

There's a couple of observations that must be made here:

1) I own enough books, CDs, and DVDs to fill 20+ boxes. In moves past, the packing wasn't that good, but I feel like I did a better job this year of spreading around the weight to make them all manageable. (Alex and Leigh might disagree)

2) I own far more shit than I realized. Granted, a studio isn't the most spacious of rooms, but even taking that into account, that 10' truck was filled to the brim. My next move will probably require a 14' truck. But that's a ways off, to say the least.

3) Continuing with the theme of I own a lot of stuff, I have to say that not everything survived the move - my CD rack had nowhere to go, so that $20 purchase from Bed, Bath, and Beyond bit the dust after eight quality years of service. Ditto to the banker's boxes that I'd been using since moving into my very first apartment in college with Alex in 2007. In addition, the tree that I'd kept since As You Like It also had to go - there just wasn't any room for a falling apart tree in my new abode. But that's okay - I've still got the poster for the show, and more than enough friendships that mean more than any tree made of reconstructed plywood.

(My Nerf gun also didn't survive...though that wasn't really that hard of a decision anyways)

4) I had to rebuild one bookshelf that was falling apart. It was previously the weakest of my three mega-bookshelves. After my repairs, though, it might be the strongest of them all.

5) I initially put my bed together backwards. I didn't discover this, though, until it collapsed under me in the night on my third night there. Fortunately, I've acquired a very comfy couch (which served the first two nights I was there) and didn't suffer too badly. I've since repaired the bed and have no reports of similar accidents happening since then.

6) I'm going to see how long I can make it without having a TV - I did it in Rogers Park, and I have Netflix for my laptop now as well, so I don't think it'll be too hard. My shelf of DVDs, however, says that I should at least get an external DVD player sometime in the near future.

7) I've had a giant dresser since junior year as well. The thing is long and serviceable, but at this time, it takes up a bit more closet space than I'd like to admit. My first furniture purchase will probably be a more vertically inclined set of drawers to replace that monstrous hulk.

8) In keeping with my Chicago tradition, boats hang in my bathroom. It's a long story, and I'll just say that it also involved keeping my boxes of pasta in the bathtub for at least a little bit. Comment below for details...or don't. I don't know that anyone actually reads this far.

9) HOLY CRAP, YOU GUYS, THERE ARE FIVE WINDOWS IN MY APARTMENT. THERE ARE TWO IN MY LIVING ROOM ALONE. WINDOWS, YOU GUYS.

WINDOWS.

10) I'm very relieved that it's been a mild summer so far, as I haven't had to splurge on a fan or air conditioner to make my renovated apartment livable just yet. A ceiling fan has been more than enough to suffice. Of course, now that I've written this, I'll wake up to it being 95 degrees and humid for the next eight weeks. Me and my big mouth.

11) Chipotle being so close is pretty damn dangerous - and this when I've decided to start saving for an upcoming world trip. Time to start regularly visiting the gym again, you guys.

12) I've spent the last three nights sitting in my living room blasting music from iTunes and reading on my couch. This is heaven.

So far (five days and counting), I'm really enjoying my new digs. It's slowly starting to feel like home. There's a few posters to hang, but for the most part, I'm really pleased with everything. It'll be a great "bachelor pad"* for the coming year or two. I'm sure I'll move again (such is life) but it's perfect for where my life is right now - no longer in transition, but moving forward.

 Pictures below!

Aforementioned Boats.

*I've dubbed this a bachelor pad if only because I am single and living in my own apartment. Does this technically make it a bachelor pad? Or is that an actual term? On a related note, I'm currently searching for a name somewhere beyond "Fortress of Solitude", if only because that's super lame. If anyone has any super dope apartment name suggestions, please let me know!