Adventures in Home Ownership – 6 months in

6 months ago to the day, I moved into my house. For almost 32 years before that, I lived in my parents’ house, which is fine. Living there made it much easier to save up money for a house. There are other ways in which living there for a while was beneficial to me, but it was about time to move out. This post is going to be a bit more scattered than my earlier Adventures in Home Ownership post, but that’s because I don’t have any specific updates right now.

Progress has been slow in the last couple of months with further unpacking and setting things up. I’ve done scattered unpacking here and there, but right now I’m kind of waiting to see what I get for Christmas before I buy any more furniture or even modify what I’ve already got. While I’m not ready to post any pictures of my final setup, I’m getting close to that point with several rooms in this house. Really the only major furniture I need at this point is a bigger dresser. My current dresser doesn’t have room for any of my T-shirts, so they’re all stuffed in the drawers in the bed that is currently in the potential guest room/rental room (depending on what I decide down the road). Once I get a bigger dresser, I can put the smaller one in that potential guest room/rental room.

I’ve also been busy with editing (first time I’ve done any kind of writing since last year’s NaNoWriMo). My initial plan was to edit one book and a couple of short stories here and there. Well, It took me four days to finish editing first novel in my vampire/werewolf series, partly because it was a light edit, and partly because I shared it with a couple of people right afterwards. Then I edited book 3, in hopes that it too would be ready to share by the time I finished. I feel like it is now. With time to spare before the end of the month, I began editing the second book. I ended up editing three full novels and seven short stories in the span of 27 days. I didn’t officially participate in this year’s NaNoWriMo, but I’m sure that I did enough editing to justify an official double win. Maybe even a triple.

I guess that’s my way of easing back into writing after a much needed year off.

I’m also planning my next major project, which I’ll start between Christmas and New Year’s. As of right now, this is going to be a fantasy book with three potential sequels, and it’ll be relatively down to earth. It’ll also be more dramatic than most of the stuff I’ve written before, adding in themes that tie to some real life lessons I’ve learned since turning 20. Some of these are lessons I’ve had to relearn in the last couple of years. I’m also basing a handful of minor characters in this book on people who have made a positive impact on my professional life, with their permission of course. And there will also be some action and a fair amount of comedy to keep it light, because that’s just my style. If this turns out as well as I hope, it could be something I’ll try to get published down the road – maybe even before my vampire/werewolf series (it’s hard to get a vampire series published right now, because Twilight fatigue is still a thing on the market).

As for work, well … my attempts at getting an office position haven’t panned out yet, but I’m nowhere close to giving up on that. Meanwhile, something happened in the last couple of weeks that I shouldn’t talk about too much online. I shouldn’t even talk to my co-workers too much about it. But to sum it up, I’ve been way too slow to file harassment complaints in the past. There was one particular manager at my retail job I could have filed dozens of complaints against in the span of the year. That’s not an exaggeration. But I never did.

I guess something clicked in me in the last week or so, because I filed one earlier this week. What happened didn’t even bug me that much – in fact I kind of enjoyed my one boss’s attempt at unjust punishment over what is at its core, a communications problem. But his boss agreed it was worth filing a complaint anyway. I know what he tried to do, and he said several inappropriate things. I’m done letting anyone treat me that way. I generally like the guy I filed this complaint against, and my intention is not to get him in trouble, but I’m done with hesitating to defend myself. Maybe that means I’m finally growing up.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Hopefully I can get more work done at the house over the holiday season, so that I can share some pictures of a couple more completed rooms. But overall, I’m very satisfied with how this year’s turned out. I bought a house, after several years of direct preparations. I accomplished most of my swimming/physical goals I set for myself at the start of the year, and the only one I didn’t accomplish was because I hurt my shoulder the day before I was to attempt it. I don’t feel like setting specific swimming goals for the New Year. Instead, I’ll just aim to improve my swimming further, get back into regular workouts after slacking a bit in the last couple of months. I also hope to finish setting up every room in my house, moving forward in the company I’m working for, and actually make some friends in town while keeping in touch with the friends I already have. I feel like those are realistic goals for the next year.