New Job and Moving Update
Nov. 11th, 2010 01:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nemorathwaldI almost certainly got the part-time web dev/design job in Ypsilanti which I applied for. J took an excellent job in Denver, which will let her work remotely from here until she moves out there in December. I'm staying here to finish my web development certificate, which will finish in May. Five months is a long time, so I won't prepare premature plans past that point.
J spent a few weeks in Chicago, interviewing with a different company every day. I was really rooting for Chicago to win. I would have been happy to move there with her. Chicago is in driving distance of Madison WI, Cleveland OH, Lansing MI, and here-- where people are located who I know and want to spend time with. It has SF conventions and fans who I know. It's within driving distance of Penguicon, ConFusion, U-Con, GenCon, Origins, and Buckeye Game Fest. It even has Chicago Toy and Game Fair and a game publisher who wants to look at my board games for publication.
I spent a day in a Motel 6 in Denver once. It is a 24-hour drive from here, each way. It is within driving distance of nowhere. I know exactly one person there, who I only met once. For calling upon the powers of my social network to help me, that is like Kryptonite.
I have been considering an offer to move to Southfield, MI in December, a few miles north of where I live now. An elderly lady would like a roommate to do ten hours of chores per week in exchange for free rent. That's an appealing prospect, because I would live within a mile or two of many of my friends, and I could put the rent money in the bank to more easily pay back my student loans.
The downsides would be, in descending order of importance:
1. She holds a bible study in the apartment every week.
2. Limitations on visitors. I currently enjoy three or four game nights per week in my current home, and a woman can stay the night in my current home without feeling super-awkward about my roommate.
3. Due to a severe allergy, no latex or soft rubber of any kind in the apartment. (Rubber bands which hold my game boxes together. The grip of my drawing tablet pen. Condoms.)
4. No ice cream in the apartment.
That sounds workable, if I can find someplace else to be during the bible study. On the one hand, she seems like a very friendly and accepting person on the phone, and happy to find workarounds for problems. On the other hand, it also sounds like the setup to a sitcom, doesn't it? "One is an itinerant, sexually-active, vocally-non-religious technophile who can live under any domestic conditions! The other is a fragile elderly churchgoer! What could possibly go wrong?"
Do not misunderstand this to be an act of desperation. I am able to pay rent with my student loans. I'd just rather leverage my advantages:
1. No one depends on me.
2. I have very few possessions.
3. I have no domestic needs beyond broadband internet access, running water, a fridge and range, a cot, and a door or curtain for privacy.
So, why not put rent money in the bank? Is it smart financial planning? Or setting myself up for tension? What do you think?
J spent a few weeks in Chicago, interviewing with a different company every day. I was really rooting for Chicago to win. I would have been happy to move there with her. Chicago is in driving distance of Madison WI, Cleveland OH, Lansing MI, and here-- where people are located who I know and want to spend time with. It has SF conventions and fans who I know. It's within driving distance of Penguicon, ConFusion, U-Con, GenCon, Origins, and Buckeye Game Fest. It even has Chicago Toy and Game Fair and a game publisher who wants to look at my board games for publication.
I spent a day in a Motel 6 in Denver once. It is a 24-hour drive from here, each way. It is within driving distance of nowhere. I know exactly one person there, who I only met once. For calling upon the powers of my social network to help me, that is like Kryptonite.
I have been considering an offer to move to Southfield, MI in December, a few miles north of where I live now. An elderly lady would like a roommate to do ten hours of chores per week in exchange for free rent. That's an appealing prospect, because I would live within a mile or two of many of my friends, and I could put the rent money in the bank to more easily pay back my student loans.
The downsides would be, in descending order of importance:
1. She holds a bible study in the apartment every week.
2. Limitations on visitors. I currently enjoy three or four game nights per week in my current home, and a woman can stay the night in my current home without feeling super-awkward about my roommate.
3. Due to a severe allergy, no latex or soft rubber of any kind in the apartment. (Rubber bands which hold my game boxes together. The grip of my drawing tablet pen. Condoms.)
4. No ice cream in the apartment.
That sounds workable, if I can find someplace else to be during the bible study. On the one hand, she seems like a very friendly and accepting person on the phone, and happy to find workarounds for problems. On the other hand, it also sounds like the setup to a sitcom, doesn't it? "One is an itinerant, sexually-active, vocally-non-religious technophile who can live under any domestic conditions! The other is a fragile elderly churchgoer! What could possibly go wrong?"
Do not misunderstand this to be an act of desperation. I am able to pay rent with my student loans. I'd just rather leverage my advantages:
1. No one depends on me.
2. I have very few possessions.
3. I have no domestic needs beyond broadband internet access, running water, a fridge and range, a cot, and a door or curtain for privacy.
So, why not put rent money in the bank? Is it smart financial planning? Or setting myself up for tension? What do you think?
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Since you asked...
Date: 2010-11-12 05:27 pm (UTC)OTOH, you could use some of your savings to do the things that might help with those mental health issues...
Re: Since you asked...
Date: 2010-11-12 06:08 pm (UTC)Of course we come to the issue of goals. I do not believe religious views are deserving of respectful treatment, so that is not a goal of mine. A living space, however, is in my best interest.
Getting along is a goal, but not as important as other goals. I won't adopt a polite pretense. The only time in which I wish to avoid hurting feelings is when it is unintentional and serves no purpose. But I usually accept hurt feelings knowingly, if I feel it was deserved, and when it is a side-effect of asserting my own boundaries. Then I accept the social consequences.
In those cases in which I wish to continue to have a relationship of some kind, we simply don't talk about it. The bottom line is that I might wish to ask her if we should make it off-limits to discussion. I am both able and willing to sustain a silence truce in a specific place such as an apartment.
Re: Since you asked...
Date: 2010-11-12 09:20 pm (UTC)"Of course we come to the issue of goals. I do not believe religious views are deserving of respectful treatment, so that is not a goal of mine."
The problem, though, is whether or not you believe that *people* are deserving of respectful treatment even when they hold views that are opposed to your own. Particularly when it comes to a subject that's as highly subjective as is religion (or politics, or etc...) This is something I've struggled with for years, and I find myself ashamed today of some of the knee-jerk rhetorical brutality I've been willing to resort to when addressing those who hold opinions that are in opposition to my own. John Stewart is increasingly becoming my role model in this regard. But that's another topic entirely.
I also know from hard experience how hard it is to maintain a respectful stance when our neurochemistry is doing the depression tango. The question becomes -- will you be able to maintain the same kind of silence on the topic that you will be asking from her? And will you be able to maintain respect for this person as a person if she "slips" from time to time? If not, don't put yourself or the little old lady through it.