Since 2012, I have lived in 4 different apartments, and every time the moving process conspires to be the absolute worst. Especially the last one, during which we combined a cross country move with landing a job (my wife), working remotely (me), and finding a place all in less than a week. No small task, and one of the most exhausting ones of our life. We vowed that the next place would be found in advance, and the process would be handled at a slower, more convenient place. It’s worked for blogs and for Unlife. Why wouldn’t it work here?

In the end, we nearly killed ourselves, and in a dramatic climax we signed a lease for… another apartment in our building.

It’s hard not to feel a sense of disappointment at all of this. The apartment itself is fine, and the new location in the building actually relieves almost everything that was a dealbreaker in the current place. But to endure 3 months of stress, only to have it end like this, makes the whole process feel like it was for nothing. If we didn’t work so hard in advance, I honestly don’t think we would have moved into the place above our own. Instead, by the time it became an option, we were too exhausted to try something else.

And now here we are, finally on the other side of this stressful, heart-wrenching journey that caused far more pain than it was worth. In an attempt to relieve the stress, I submerged myself in a soothing pool of video games, creative writing proving to be too taxing at the end of each long day. I tried to save those efforts for the weekend instead, but most of those ended up dedicated to the move, and after a while I could feel my writing skills atrophy a tad. I’ll get back in shape, but it’s always hard to backslide and then have to fight just to get back to where you were.

When I was a freelancer, everyone asked why I couldn’t just write my passion projects when I got home from a normal 9-5 job. But have you ever tried? It’s exhausting. Not impossible, mind you; these blogs have served as a lifeline to creativity, but the rest of my time has been consumed by familial obligations and moving mayhem. I have lost my edge, especially with storytelling. I feel like writing has begun to resemble moving; I’m too burnt out to care at the moment. I just want it to be done. I want to stop having to try so hard. I want to just drown in that pool of video games because it’s so much easier than trying and risking more heartbreak.

And the weird thing is, when I wrote full time, I dreamed of gaining recognition for my craft, but received very little. Now, with my writing time much more limited, I’ve never been so inundated with “good job”s and people praising my talent. Between Unlife and my job, I get a lot of support. And somehow, that makes me even sadder, because all this advanced work, it doesn’t feel like I got ahead. Instead, it can feel that it was a waste of my time that wasn’t worth it.

But now that the move is (almost) over, it’s time to recommit to writing – time to get out of the pool, and take my next step forward.