Ok, so I haven't officially signed anything yet, but I have given someone money (which, come to think of it, was a fucking terrible idea), but I digress.
I guess (or more accurately: it has been determined, or even MORE accurately, it is the case) that I am moving.
I'm not sure (nay, I'm completely unsure) why I am so hesitant to just say that "I am moving", or even somehow worse say that "I decided to move. It's like I am uncomfortable with the idea that it is something that I actively made the initiative to do, like I'm all too comfortable with the idea that this is the kind of thing that was or is thrust upon me against my will. That's got to be some kind of issue...anyway-
Technically, I could have said about 2 weeks ago that it was true that I "would be moving out of my place", but having to admit that made me uncomfortable, because it brought attention to the fact that I was so unhappy about having to admit it was true. Not because I didn't want to move out, which is also true, but because the process I was going through seemed so undeniably cruel and illogical, and I was freaking the fuck out.
First of all, the process of driving around the whole god-damn town for hours every night after work for a week and a half looking at places and deciding if you really want to commit to making that place, or even that area, the place you want to live, and trying to contact and follow up with all the people who (poorly, it would seem) manage these places for the opportunity to look inside said places is pretty stressfull and taxing on it's own, especially if you're as neurotic and obsessive as I am (I had a binder- a binder with TABS- colored tabs per neighborhood) and it also didn't help that things were several hundred dollars more expensive than I was expecting regardless of the area, but I was more anxious about the risks and costs involved:
At some point in the process of investigating places to move into, it became apparant that in order to successfully move into a place, I would first, inescapably (I had discovered to my unhappy surprise), have to decide I was going to move out of my current place, and was going to have to do so with no guarantee that I had a place to move into yet. This made me, in my opinion, reasonably uncomfortable
Moving out requires 30 days notice, and finding a place that was available to move in to (therefore, requiring payment at that time) more than 0-15 days was at the time an impossibility, not because of my efforts, but because said places seemed to simply not exist in the public space. You see, in Los Angeles, landlords, etc, are apparantly officially not allowed to show you an apartment until it has been completely vacated and cleaned and repainted/prepared for the next tenant. Which means that when an apartment is ready to show, it is then available to move in to immediately. The quandry here clearly being that wanting to secure a new place meant looking at a new place meant waiting until the place was immediately available, which would result in paying rent and deposit for a place I wasn't living in, having already paid rent and given 30 days notice in advance of moving out of the previous place, as well as paid monthly bills, which all in all is a costly proposal, especially for someone who has to prove to a new property manager that they have a decent amount of cash in their bank account. Dear Quandry: fuck you. Love, Dave.
It was a situation I didn't want to be in, but so was commiting to leaving a place when I didn't know where I was leaving to yet, and I didn't want to have the pressure of needing a place quickly effecting my decision as to finding the place that I felt was the best choice of a new home, and not simply "the best I could find in a hurry". That was why I was going through this self-inflicted stressfull over-organized process (a big, fucking binder, with maps and colored tabs and shit- seriously, you should see this thing), and paying for better listings, and all that jazz, after all, so I wouldn't have to make a mad-dash freak-out apartment hunt a week before I was supposed to be moving out. Once again, the way things just seem to work here in LA was defeating me, despite all logical sense. People just either make the leap of faith out of their places or pay a month's rent in two places around here, that's just the way things are done.
So, eventually, after giving 30 days notice and extending the search closer to the move-date than I had wanted to, I kept looking and looking, and eventually found a place, jumped through all the quite disconcerting strange uncustomary hoops they wanted me to, including carting my mother, who was in town visiting, over to the apartment to impress a crazy old woman into believing I was a 'nice Jewish boy," and making an apointment to meet a Chassidic man, payis, funny hat and all, (not the property owner, but a friend who was doing them a favor- also strange) at his home to "talk together" and re-tell verbally all my information , which I had already graciously typed and printed for them in advance, over a dining room set that was actually covered in plastic like some insane television sit-com joke and littered in Torah Study books , where he told me that there was a Rabbi at some local Conservative Temple with the same first and last name as me, to which I could only nervously reply "Well, it's not me..."
He didn't think it was funny, but I did.
I had very recently gotten over the intense strangeness of the entire situation and decided to just go with it, and so all will work out fine. After all, in all fairness, I really am a nice Jewish boy, I wouldn't make my Mother lie to an old woman, right?
So sometime soon, I'll sign the lease, and I'll be able to move in March 1st. Which is awesome, because it gives me a lot of time to go through and pack all of the insanely huge amounts of shit I have, and makes me feel better since I was having so much trouble finding a place that was even available february 1st at the time.
-and so, that Stress should be over and done with. I'm thinking about having a move-out "house-cooling" party sometime before I go. It seems like a briliant idea, and besides, if I'm too noisy, what are they going to do, kick me out?
Dave
I guess (or more accurately: it has been determined, or even MORE accurately, it is the case) that I am moving.
I'm not sure (nay, I'm completely unsure) why I am so hesitant to just say that "I am moving", or even somehow worse say that "I decided to move. It's like I am uncomfortable with the idea that it is something that I actively made the initiative to do, like I'm all too comfortable with the idea that this is the kind of thing that was or is thrust upon me against my will. That's got to be some kind of issue...anyway-
Technically, I could have said about 2 weeks ago that it was true that I "would be moving out of my place", but having to admit that made me uncomfortable, because it brought attention to the fact that I was so unhappy about having to admit it was true. Not because I didn't want to move out, which is also true, but because the process I was going through seemed so undeniably cruel and illogical, and I was freaking the fuck out.
First of all, the process of driving around the whole god-damn town for hours every night after work for a week and a half looking at places and deciding if you really want to commit to making that place, or even that area, the place you want to live, and trying to contact and follow up with all the people who (poorly, it would seem) manage these places for the opportunity to look inside said places is pretty stressfull and taxing on it's own, especially if you're as neurotic and obsessive as I am (I had a binder- a binder with TABS- colored tabs per neighborhood) and it also didn't help that things were several hundred dollars more expensive than I was expecting regardless of the area, but I was more anxious about the risks and costs involved:
At some point in the process of investigating places to move into, it became apparant that in order to successfully move into a place, I would first, inescapably (I had discovered to my unhappy surprise), have to decide I was going to move out of my current place, and was going to have to do so with no guarantee that I had a place to move into yet. This made me, in my opinion, reasonably uncomfortable
Moving out requires 30 days notice, and finding a place that was available to move in to (therefore, requiring payment at that time) more than 0-15 days was at the time an impossibility, not because of my efforts, but because said places seemed to simply not exist in the public space. You see, in Los Angeles, landlords, etc, are apparantly officially not allowed to show you an apartment until it has been completely vacated and cleaned and repainted/prepared for the next tenant. Which means that when an apartment is ready to show, it is then available to move in to immediately. The quandry here clearly being that wanting to secure a new place meant looking at a new place meant waiting until the place was immediately available, which would result in paying rent and deposit for a place I wasn't living in, having already paid rent and given 30 days notice in advance of moving out of the previous place, as well as paid monthly bills, which all in all is a costly proposal, especially for someone who has to prove to a new property manager that they have a decent amount of cash in their bank account. Dear Quandry: fuck you. Love, Dave.
It was a situation I didn't want to be in, but so was commiting to leaving a place when I didn't know where I was leaving to yet, and I didn't want to have the pressure of needing a place quickly effecting my decision as to finding the place that I felt was the best choice of a new home, and not simply "the best I could find in a hurry". That was why I was going through this self-inflicted stressfull over-organized process (a big, fucking binder, with maps and colored tabs and shit- seriously, you should see this thing), and paying for better listings, and all that jazz, after all, so I wouldn't have to make a mad-dash freak-out apartment hunt a week before I was supposed to be moving out. Once again, the way things just seem to work here in LA was defeating me, despite all logical sense. People just either make the leap of faith out of their places or pay a month's rent in two places around here, that's just the way things are done.
So, eventually, after giving 30 days notice and extending the search closer to the move-date than I had wanted to, I kept looking and looking, and eventually found a place, jumped through all the quite disconcerting strange uncustomary hoops they wanted me to, including carting my mother, who was in town visiting, over to the apartment to impress a crazy old woman into believing I was a 'nice Jewish boy," and making an apointment to meet a Chassidic man, payis, funny hat and all, (not the property owner, but a friend who was doing them a favor- also strange) at his home to "talk together" and re-tell verbally all my information , which I had already graciously typed and printed for them in advance, over a dining room set that was actually covered in plastic like some insane television sit-com joke and littered in Torah Study books , where he told me that there was a Rabbi at some local Conservative Temple with the same first and last name as me, to which I could only nervously reply "Well, it's not me..."
He didn't think it was funny, but I did.
I had very recently gotten over the intense strangeness of the entire situation and decided to just go with it, and so all will work out fine. After all, in all fairness, I really am a nice Jewish boy, I wouldn't make my Mother lie to an old woman, right?
So sometime soon, I'll sign the lease, and I'll be able to move in March 1st. Which is awesome, because it gives me a lot of time to go through and pack all of the insanely huge amounts of shit I have, and makes me feel better since I was having so much trouble finding a place that was even available february 1st at the time.
-and so, that Stress should be over and done with. I'm thinking about having a move-out "house-cooling" party sometime before I go. It seems like a briliant idea, and besides, if I'm too noisy, what are they going to do, kick me out?
Dave
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[Edited on Jan 29, 2006 5:02PM]