In the space of just three and a half weeks we went from looking around a new-build show home to reserving a plot on the site and suddenly, just like that, I'm finally buying my first home. This is something I have wanted ever since I was a little girl. For some people, it's the big white dress and the dream wedding, for me, its always been kitchen islands and pantries.
I've moved house a lot in recent years, at one point wracking up five different addresses in two years so I'm looking forward, with a grateful heart, to be finally moving somewhere I plan to call my home for the foreseeable future. And maybe because of that, or maybe because of the vast amount of work I've done on myself over the past few years, this move feels different to the others, and I'm hopeful that that is a good thing.
For the first time around a house move, I'm not experiencing that feeling of "I just want to move now". I haven't grown frustrated with our current home and I'm not constantly pointing out things that I can't wait to be rid of. Instead, I've been struck with a case of the rose-tinted glasses and while the larger part of me is excited to level up in this way, part of me will miss our lovely flat and the first place that we've lived together as a couple and have been able to call our own. We haven't outgrown it, we're just ready for our next step and this feels like it. It just makes sense.
Along our house hunting journey, we've spent numerous date nights having what we called RightMove dates. Glorious evenings spent cosied up on the sofa (sometimes going the extra mile to pull out the sofa bed), bowls of snacks and the laptop casting to the TV. We drew our search area, set our budget and had endless laughs at the offerings RightMove gave us. Plenty were genuine contenders and had us considering our commute routes and budget while others were so outrageously misdescribed by the estate agents that we saved them for comedic value alone. Take the house that claimed to be immaculately presented with a landscaped garden which actually featured multiple bin bags in the living room and what can only be described as a junk yard in the back garden. Other descriptions were so laughable that they've born seed to numerous in-jokes between us and have formed the basis of a whole new secret code. Not to mention the surprise tiny cow game...
The surprise tiny cow came about one of these evenings when we were happily scrolling through photos of other people's houses when suddenly, my attention was drawn to an ornament, maybe a doorstop, about the size of a spaniel and in the shape of a dairy cow. Something about it was so unsettling that I jumped in my seat at the sight of it and Watson spent the next five minutes in fits of hysterics. And so a new game was born. Not only did we then find more surprise tiny cows in other houses (seriously, how many are there?!) but Watson took immense joy in buying a pack of four tiny cows and hiding them around our own home for me to find. Almost every time I find one, I jump out of my skin and curse him either under my breath or whole heartedly with various expletives depending on the size of the reaction it got from me. And then its my turn to hide the cow and on and on the game has gone for quite some time now. The current record is 21 days that it spent hidden in the glovebox of his car. We have fun together.
I'm so glad that we started our house hunting journey in this way, because we had so much fun on RightMove and then the actual house buying process hasn't involved using it at all. Apart from identifying a new build site that we hadn't visited yet, once we went there in person, the ball started rolling and we haven't needed to look at RightMove since. Like I said, we went from viewing the show home to reserving a plot within three and a half weeks. Now I'm preparing to say goodbye to our home and my rose-tinted glasses have got me thinking about the things that I do and don't want to take with me.
It was while walking the boys on our usual route that this idea of "wherever you go, there you are" came to me. It's something that has been familiar to me for some time now but has been making itself known more and more as we've started to tell more and more people about our intentions to buy a new-build. Everyone has an opinion, and while some of them have been very useful (find out where your stopcock is) others have had all the bearings of someone who, wherever they go, there they are.
I've had people recoiling in horror when I've told them we're going new-build, because they knew someone who had a friend who's aunties cousin once bought a new-build with wonky floors and a washing machine that leaked. And the snagging lists. Oh the snagging lists. If one more person rolls their eyes and sighs at me because of a snagging list, I will add them to my own personal snagging list. Yes it's a new-build. Yes there will be a snagging list. No I don't mind. Deal with it. We have chosen to go new-build so that we will have a home that we won't have to do anything to. While part of me likes the idea of a project in the future, present me craves a simple life, with time for hobbies. I have a business to run and two older dogs to care for, I don't have time to be project managing a new kitchen, building a hobbies room or levelling a driveway.
One person even told us to be careful who our neighbours were. Our neighbours?! Friend, that is one thing we most certainly won't have control over. The colour of our kitchen, yes. Who our neighbours are, no. You want to know the secret to not having bad neighbours? Make peace with the ones you've got. The same goes for Barneys archnemesis on our walk.
Like I said, it was during a walk with the boys that this old saying came to me as I called Barney back to put him on his lead so that we wouldn't have a show down with the very sweet but very bouncy collie-cross who lives at the end of our street. Barney avoids other dogs as a rule. He enjoys being in a pack of dogs he knows, enjoys coming to work with me and loves our big family Christmas Day walks, but gives strange dogs a very wide berth. Except, not this dog. After one too many times of being bounded up to and given a slightly too enthusiastic hello, Barney has taken a "I will tell him to go away before he comes over here" approach. Nine times out of ten, I give the other owner a cheery wave and apologise for Barney's anti-social behaviour when really I believe that he should train his dog not to run over to people and dogs it doesn't know. I used to get so frustrated by this kind of behaviour but I have since decided that protecting my peace is more important than being right. There are always going to be other dog owners who haven't trained their dogs and that doesn't make them bad people. Now I just take steps to keep Barney's experience as stress-free as possible and as a result, my walk stays calm and relaxing too. (Archie is oblivious to most of these encounters and continues to enjoy his walks regardless of who we meet.)
If I took umbridge with every other dog walker who let their dog annoy Barney, I would very quickly see annoying dog walkers everywhere but by reframing this one experience, I've been able to reframe them all and as a result, it won't matter if there are unruly dogs at our new stomping ground because we already have a way to deal with them. If we moved house without getting over this one annoyance of our current home, we still wouldn't have the tools to deal with it in our new home and so the cycle would continue. This is why my well-meaning friend is plagued by bad neighbours. He has never made peace with any of his past neighbours and so cannot make peace with the flaws of his current neighbours. The secret to this "wherever you go, there you are" malarkey, is that the external factors never change, you do. There are always other dog walkers and noisy neighbours, only by doing the work on yourself, you are no longer bothered by them.
That's why Watson and I no longer hate the noises outside our bedroom window at night. One warm summers night, we were sleeping (or at least, trying to) with the window open but were being regularly disturbed by someone on a skateboard outside. We had been talking about foxes earlier in the evening and in a flash of inspiration I mumbled sleepily to Watson "oh god, now the foxes have a skateboard..." and just like that, the annoying skateboard had been replaced in both our minds by the hilarious image of a family of foxes balancing on a skateboard. I picture them in steampunk goggles as well. Now, every time we hear a moped, a skateboard or sometimes a shopping trolley being pushed along the road behind our flat, we giggle at the thought of skateboarding foxes instead of feeling disturbed by the noise pollution.
"Wherever you go, there you are" reminds us that we can't outrun our problems. I've been exploring my more spiritual side this year and have been learning more about the Law of Attraction. I've learnt that running away from something only brings more of the same into your life. The more you fight against problems like debt and bad relationships, the worse they become. I have certainly seen this to be true in my own life. Every time I try to control aspects like money or the number of clients my business has, they always end up slipping through my fingers like sand, and the tighter I grasp, the faster they fall. It's only when I let go and relax that the energy around these things seems to flow. The same is true of trying to escape things you don't like about your home or your work.
Trying to escape the problem doesn't solve it. Understanding why you think the scenario is a problem and finding a way to reframe it, solves it. For example, I get frustrated when other dog walkers let their bouncy dogs run up to my two older dogs because I know that my boys don't want to play bouncy games with dogs they don't know. I feel like I'm letting them down by not intervening, especially if Archie gets trampled or Barney feels threatened. My frustration in those moments comes from a deeper feeling of helplessness so by taking control of the situation sooner by making an obvious detour around those people and giving them a cheery wave to show them I wish them well, but from a distance, I feel as though I've done right by my dogs and stood up for myself in the process. "Problem" solved.
And this is why I'm feeling so positive about our house move, because I've finally stopped running away from my problems. I'm now facing every one of them head-on using this tool of identifying what I'm really feeling each time a new challenge comes up. More often than not, I'm frustrated that I won't be reaching my desired outcome quickly enough and that's something I will have to continue to work on. I like quick results and patience isn't a virtue I possess. But now that I am viewing challenging moments in this way, I'm finding that they are coming up less and less often and when they do, I feel increasingly prepared to deal with them. And that feels like a good attitude to be buying a new house with.
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