craziness

120 people within the first 10 minutes, all crammed into our tiny house at the one time. Complete strangers pushing themselves into our bedroom, our bathroom, and sitting on our dining table, as there wasn't enough room for that many people to stand in the same room simultaneously. After the first half it petered out a bit, so by the end there had probably been 200 people through.

That was our Saturday morning. The first of many open house inspections for the sale of the house we live in. It only lasted half an hour, but it was awful enough to make us pretty miserable for the rest of the day. I had spent half the day before and all morning cleaning every nook and cranny of the place to make the house look good. I even polished the floors, only to have 200 people (none of who even attempted to wipe their feet) trample through it, so that I ended up having to clean the floors all over again afterwards.

I sat out the front for most of it, watching as people streamed continually down the street and straight through our front door. It was like there had been a train pull up around the corner, and everyone getting off was coming to our house. Mr You stayed inside for most of it (mainly because he couldn't actually get back out again). Both of us overhearing comments, some good, some bad: "Well how could you live in this, it's tiny, you couldn't. You'd have to knock a wall down"... etc.

Next time Mr You wants to stick up a sign that says “We are only the tenants, not the owners, we have nothing to gain from this, please respect our furniture”.
And I want to hang my art on the walls with price stickers and business cards. ;)

Up to this point we were half-way to making the decision that we may try and move out of the city, not to the suburbs, but to a whole new town, a much smaller one way up north. After Saturday morning we were 95% decided. The final 5% being us managing to travel up there, and find a new house, come back and move in the time before we have to be out of here.

So it looks like we'll be moving away from the city altogether. We've been talking about it for about 2 years, but we kept chickening out, thinking we were too attached to work in the city, city lifestyle and friends. This time, it seems as though many things are falling into place (or out of it) enough to convince us that this time, the timing is right. I'm frightened (I've been in Sydney my whole adult life), but I'm also excited. I’ve got many many thoughts running through my mind, and a huge pile of work to get through, so life seems cramped and scattered.

On the up side, while packing more boxes, I went through all my old art folders and cleared a whole heap of stuff out (don’t worry it was crappy stuff), I managed to fill the whole recycling bin with old drawings and sketches. And there are a couple of sculptures in the rubbish bin. It’s so cleansing getting rid of old stuff. The nicest part was finding work I’d forgotten about, that reaches all the way back to school in some cases, stuff that I really like. It’s reassuring. (E.G. The drawing above is a small section from a school dance poster I did back in high school. I’d forgotten that somehow I became the school poster illustrator. That was a nice reminder for me that despite being lost in the business world for so long, I’m finally back on the right track).

Anyway, times are a-changin’. I know there are quite a few of you guys that have moved away to new towns. What’s it like? Do you fear not finding new friends, and losing the old ones? Trouble finding work? Have you ever regretted it, or do you just move on? I’d love to hear your stories…

(p.s. one of the reassuring things about moving away, is that it won’t effect our friendships in the slightest.)