I guess first a quick update on my housing situation

So where last I left off, I posted all the gory details of the situation with the problem flatmate, as of a month ago. It's friendlocked but I can still see it so I'm just going to write an update for myself now. To summarize:

All the ads for flatmates and rentals specify that they're looking for "quiet, tidy, considerate, respectful." Rob the Problem Flatmate was none of those. It was impossible to sleep an entire night through during weeknights because of all the noise he made, especially when his girlfriend was also there (on weekends I'm usually at Brett's place). He did turn out to be the psychopath kind of food thief - by the time he moved out a week ago, I'd worked out that his total tab on stolen food was about $45. He had trouble remembering that he didn't live in the house by himself, and that everything in it was not magically there for his sole use. He got evicted by the property manager for extreme untidyness. He currently owes me almost $500 for electric/internet, and by the time the next bill comes around it'll be closer to $600.

Meanwhile, the sale of the house is proceeding along. This week was all about getting everything cleaned up after Rob's messy departure. This weekend will be the first showing. The real estate people all think that the house will sell quickly. I'm looking for other places to live, figuring on moving in early December. Hopefully not too expensive, that has veggie garden space and a dishwasher. Unfortunately, all of the good places would require at least one flatmate, and I'm kind of done with flatmates (...again. I mean, I managed to not have one for pretty much my entire adult life up until I moved here).

I guess that's all I really want to say about that, at least in public.

My last decade

Anyway, so the real reason I wandered over here was to write a lengthier answer to this tweet than a tweet response would've allowed: https://twitter.com/stfutony/status/1193954501620690944

tony asks: there’s only ONE MONTH left in the decade. what have you accomplished?

My answer:

Well let's see... 2010 was the tail end of my time in Savannah. I'd gotten laid off and was collecting unemployment up until May, when I moved back to Indiana, then went on a two month trip to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and San Francisco due to my grandfather's funeral. In the fall I got a job going out on boats to collect samples related to the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. I only went out twice though. I think I was overqualified and not exactly shy about keeping my mouth shut when I saw things being done wrong, so they stopped asking me to go along.

Then from 2011 to 2018, I was in Mobile. I made a whole bunch of friends, mostly related to gaming (roleplaying and board games), and also lost some of them along the way. I was a lot more socially active offline while in Mobile than I ever was in the previous decade in Savannah. I also did a lot more academically impressive things due to getting involved in the EarthCube project.

Then I moved to New Zealand to start working on a PhD, met Brett, and (aside from the housing drama that's been going on since late July) I'm generally having a pretty good life. A lot of my daily life looks the same as before from an outside perspective, but I feel like everything is completely different and generally better.

Meanwhile, one of the other responses on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ThatsPrettyLouw/status/1194232180937023488

cthulouw replies: You feel crippling inadequacy when you try to list your own accomplishments and have now fallen into the deep hole that is an existential crisis, questioning what you're doing with your life and why were put here in the first place

No? Just me then?

K.

My answer: (https://twitter.com/Kayar/status/1194792399702069250)

Well if this question had appeared a decade ago, this would've been where I was. Now I think of that decade as a decade of rest and regroup before I sprang into action to do bigger and better things.

To go into more detail from there:

From 2000 to 2010, I didn't do a whole lot. I earned my MS at the tail end of 2000, was in Atlanta for 6 months while looking for a "real" job, then was in Savannah from 2001-2010. I didn't do a whole lot. I had virtually no offline life. I wrote a lot of Nanowrimo and did a lot of online roleplaying, and that was about it really. I did start doing yoga in 2008, which eventually changed my life for the better in all sorts of ways.

But it was definitely a time of rest and regroup. I was burnt out on school and barely made it out with the actual degree. My marriage had just ended, and the bounceback relationship ended shortly after I moved to Savannah. My grasp on reality had recently shattered and it took a while to sort things out and build a new (stronger and better) paradigm. I think being laid off in 2009 was good timing overall, to push me out of the rut that I didn't need to be in anymore by that point, and go off to do something else.