Casita

Today I found my future home! It's a tiny house--actually a guest house behind a non-tiny house--near the university. But not on the side where I used to live with A.

Not that you asked. But you were wondering, weren't you? I know I was.

I feel very fortunate. My new abode has a (small) private yard with a gas grill, its own miniature laundry room, real A/C (as opposed to the traditional desert "swamp cooler," which is economical but not necessarily effective), and a DISHWASHER. Talk about a rare luxury. Plus I can walk to work! Well, I can when it isn't 107 degrees with 70% humidity. September through May, give or take, will be walking months.

My dog will love the yard; my cat will love the windows; and though the place is small, it has a good layout for a pair of animals who don't especially like each other. I think we will thrive.

Still scared, though. In a very strange quirk of timing, both my sponsor and my therapist were out of town during the past 96 hours, so I found out I'd be moving and proceeded to locate and rent this place without speaking with either of them. I told Ja tonight about the whole deal, and she murmured that it's a really big change. Yep. And we are advised to avoid making Really Big Changes in the first year of sobriety. Yep.

So I am approaching this scenario as one might a potentially live explosive. I don't feel much urge to drink most of the time, though those moments do come and go. (Today, for example, I didn't think about having a drink all day until I typed that last sentence. Yay today!) Still, I'll be alone for hours every day. It's probably not possible to overstate the importance of working my program with total commitment.

At the same time, moving sooner than I'd planned means my savings are far less than they would otherwise be. I have to hustle up lots of freelance work pronto and execute it responsibly. I feel very solid now about the execution; the hustling is another story. I think I shall have to declare August the Month of the Hustle. As well as, um, the Month of Sudden Relocation. And the Month of Serious Devotion to Program.

Overwhelmed much? Why, yes. Yes, I am.

But, y'know, this is what I want to do and need to do. This is about becoming the person I want to be. What an opportunity.

It feels almost as though someone pushed a reset button on the last year of my life: I'm about to move into an itsy-bitsy apartment in Tucson, where I will attempt to build a freelance career and a good life. Only, uh, without the considerable savings I had in the bank a year ago. And without drinking. Hee. Oh, and with a dog and with AA. Hee!