When Your Old Life Gives You The Boot

When your decisions lead to new growth

When I knew I had to move from my old apartment, I was suffused with a sense of unpreparedness I had yet to encounter in my life. The previous four months before I eventually moved out had been fraught with apartment woes that even I couldn’t wrap my head around. My year started off realizing I had a mouse infestation that started while I was away for the Christmas break. This is on top of the fact that our building was overrun with roaches and that cluster flies, a thing I’m disgusted I had to look up, had invaded through the cracks in the exterior of the building during the cold months and busted loose the minute it turned warm in LA. I was officially living in an apocalyptic world I didn’t sign up for.

After spending months battling with my building to take care of things, I finally called the city on them and they made sure to hop to immediately after that. I didn’t live alone at the time, but at this point I very much understood that I was on my own. During the frustrating back and forth conversations with my building management, I had been looking for a place but realized I had simply been perusing while not actually making a definitive decision about moving. Making this realization during this time (and the appearance of the cluster flies) made me increase my efforts to find something that would work for me. I’m the only one here and I’m the only one leaving. It was absolutely necessary for me to strengthen my resolve and efforts to find a situation that served me best. I put myself fully into a “find a house” mode.

I started calling and emailing many different places but didn’t hear any word. I didn’t let this discourage me. Eventually I would physically leave work in the middle of the day to go out and drive around to different places that would speak to me or seemed cute to check out. No stone was left unturned.

My new apartment came to me from Craigslist! I know, I know, Craigslist can be shady. However, anything sounds good when the previous findings have been duds. The ad for this apartment had no pictures and there were some grammatical errors. The difference for me was I could tell the person who wrote the ad was foreign and had put, from what I could tell, extra effort in the description written online. Following the good feeling I had, I reached out and was able to see it the next day. The apartment that was listed was perfect! It had the bathtub I envisioned, separate areas for the living area, bathroom, and kitchen. I quickly felt myself falling in love. Seeing my enthusiasm, the landlord informed me that there was another unit on the second floor that was not yet available until the end of the month. My ears perked up at second floor and I decided to go see it. Best. Decision. Ever. It didn’t just have what the other apartment had, this one had no building blocking the window giving the apartment the best view of sky and trees and no nosey peepers from another building able to look in. And there was no catch! All utilities included WITH a parking spot. Needless to say, I signed on the dotted line and haven’t looked back since.

Nothing will happen if you stay in the same place. As active beings, it’s imperative that there is a flow of energy feeding all the “next’s” you could ever imagine and even some that you haven’t been able to imagine. Had we not had a mouse infestation, had I not lived in a building that management didn’t seem to care about, had I not taken a chance and gone out to see an apartment that could’ve been a sham, I wouldn’t be the person I am now living the life I’m living. Which I grow more and more obsessed with every day.

I may not have known what I was looking for, but that energy that pushed me out of my comfortable place in life served such an important role in all of this. It’s the energy I put out there in the world going to see places I weren’t even sure were fully available that got me my apartment. I’m so sure of it that I’d be willing to put money on it.

Now, the real question is, how does one transfer this process to making some money???!