Time waits for no rental agreement.
So, I'm thinking about timing.
The lease on my student house ran out... yesterday? But I left about a month ago, as things (or people, really) were getting a bit horrible. I'd been looking for a new place for MONTHS, with all my extended family helping. Eventually, I found a house that was okay - rent was alright, house was decent, transport to uni not great, and I didn't know the housemates but they seemed okay.
I got furniture through family, but every time we tried to organise everything, something didn't work out and it got put off again. So I haven't moved in yet, I'm still staying with my uncle. Semester starts in... oh shit, a week? Seriously? See, the weeks just kept slipping away.
Then a few days ago I find out two friends of mine have a room at their place - a house I adore, rent's the same, transport is so much better, every social occasion our wider group of friends attend is held there, and I think I can take my cat with me. Apart from being just after I found a shitty place, it's not available till a week into semester.
It's not too bad - I hadn't signed anything so I ditched the last place, and I can miss that first week of classes without too much trouble. But, it's going to be a really rushed move, and I end up paying six weeks rent on a place I never lived in.
Obviously, it's bad timing. Life is full of bad timing.
My first year of uni was horrendous - semester 1 went so smoothly, I did great, got some half assed award, made friends, had fun. Then June-ish, my senile grandfather gets picked up by police sleeping in his car on the side of the road, my lovely grandma, who looks after my chronically depressed auntie B and her young child E - a child who lived with us when B got post natal depression, until E was older and B was slightly less miserable and irresponsible - anyway, my grandma goes into hospital and is given six months to live. My mother breaks her back, permanently, and loses her job. I was living at a residential college on campus at the time (on scholarship), and they throw you out for the holidays to hold conferences or something.
So, my mother and I spend that month long holiday living in a tent, out of our car (with our lovely dog). At this point we didn't have any family that wasn't dependent on us already.
I go back to uni afterwards, Mum gets a caravan and we try to look after both of her parents, and B, and E, across two states. I do alright for half the semester. The christmas holidays draw close, and we try to find somewhere we can afford to park the caravan for the three month summer break.
I stop going to classes, have trouble leaving my room. A bunch more dodgy timing, in smaller incidents, and I miss my exams. I fail every subject, lose my scholarship and go live in the caravan.
Both the grandparents die. Life goes on, and eventually, things settle down.
Well, it was interesting. It certainly wasn't the worst we've had - far from it, really. It was just... everything all at once, and each thing impacted other things, in a chain reaction. Bad timing. We've had a lot of that, over the years.
Now, I'm a writer, by nature I guess. And a lot of writing is about timing. Plot points have to be carefully spaced and paced, some scenes go faster, some slower; you restructure and rearrange to make things happen at the right time in your reader's head. Even at a sentence level, you arrange the words, the spaces, to put your reader's sense of 'now' in the right place at the right time.
And all that timing is for effect - it's there to make things more dramatic, or more frustrating, or satisfying, or surprising. To give you long enough to fall in love with a character or for them to fall in love with each other. To make you wait long enough to be thrilled, relieved, proud, when things finally work out.
But life isn't like that. Assignments are all due at once, social calendars have big empty places on them, you get a flat tire the day after you take out the spare to make room. All your tv shows are on at once, you're late and miss the bus, you wait years to fall in love and then two amazing people show up at once.
Without noticing, I've learnt to be cautious. I save that money because next week I could be paying my mother's rent, I wait to start that drawing because if I do it now someone will interrupt me, I don't date that person because what if that other person wants me straight after.
And sometimes, I'm right to. Sometimes I agree to a shitty house, then find a good one, and I lose a whole lot of money, and I should have waited. But, it usually works out in the end - with time.
Now all I can think of is when I was very young, in the schoolyard, watching two other kids swing a long skipping rope. It was the ultimate show of skill to run into the centre while the rope was swinging, and start jumping without missing a beat. The trick was in the timing. I'd stand on the edge when it was my turn, watching, letting my body fall into the rhythm. The window of opportunity was very small, but it came around often. But sometimes, I'd find myself stuck there, mesmerised, dismissing each turn of the rope as not quite the right timing and never making it in to the fun part.
I think, when faced with that delicate balance of wait and go, you have to just... go. Sometimes, the timing is off and you get smacked in the face with a skipping rope at great speed. But you have to hope that the momentum is enough to carry the rope around again while you're there, and next time you'll be airborne, face stinging, body weightless. Triumphant.
The lease on my student house ran out... yesterday? But I left about a month ago, as things (or people, really) were getting a bit horrible. I'd been looking for a new place for MONTHS, with all my extended family helping. Eventually, I found a house that was okay - rent was alright, house was decent, transport to uni not great, and I didn't know the housemates but they seemed okay.
I got furniture through family, but every time we tried to organise everything, something didn't work out and it got put off again. So I haven't moved in yet, I'm still staying with my uncle. Semester starts in... oh shit, a week? Seriously? See, the weeks just kept slipping away.
Then a few days ago I find out two friends of mine have a room at their place - a house I adore, rent's the same, transport is so much better, every social occasion our wider group of friends attend is held there, and I think I can take my cat with me. Apart from being just after I found a shitty place, it's not available till a week into semester.
It's not too bad - I hadn't signed anything so I ditched the last place, and I can miss that first week of classes without too much trouble. But, it's going to be a really rushed move, and I end up paying six weeks rent on a place I never lived in.
Obviously, it's bad timing. Life is full of bad timing.
My first year of uni was horrendous - semester 1 went so smoothly, I did great, got some half assed award, made friends, had fun. Then June-ish, my senile grandfather gets picked up by police sleeping in his car on the side of the road, my lovely grandma, who looks after my chronically depressed auntie B and her young child E - a child who lived with us when B got post natal depression, until E was older and B was slightly less miserable and irresponsible - anyway, my grandma goes into hospital and is given six months to live. My mother breaks her back, permanently, and loses her job. I was living at a residential college on campus at the time (on scholarship), and they throw you out for the holidays to hold conferences or something.
So, my mother and I spend that month long holiday living in a tent, out of our car (with our lovely dog). At this point we didn't have any family that wasn't dependent on us already.
I go back to uni afterwards, Mum gets a caravan and we try to look after both of her parents, and B, and E, across two states. I do alright for half the semester. The christmas holidays draw close, and we try to find somewhere we can afford to park the caravan for the three month summer break.
I stop going to classes, have trouble leaving my room. A bunch more dodgy timing, in smaller incidents, and I miss my exams. I fail every subject, lose my scholarship and go live in the caravan.
Both the grandparents die. Life goes on, and eventually, things settle down.
Well, it was interesting. It certainly wasn't the worst we've had - far from it, really. It was just... everything all at once, and each thing impacted other things, in a chain reaction. Bad timing. We've had a lot of that, over the years.
Now, I'm a writer, by nature I guess. And a lot of writing is about timing. Plot points have to be carefully spaced and paced, some scenes go faster, some slower; you restructure and rearrange to make things happen at the right time in your reader's head. Even at a sentence level, you arrange the words, the spaces, to put your reader's sense of 'now' in the right place at the right time.
And all that timing is for effect - it's there to make things more dramatic, or more frustrating, or satisfying, or surprising. To give you long enough to fall in love with a character or for them to fall in love with each other. To make you wait long enough to be thrilled, relieved, proud, when things finally work out.
But life isn't like that. Assignments are all due at once, social calendars have big empty places on them, you get a flat tire the day after you take out the spare to make room. All your tv shows are on at once, you're late and miss the bus, you wait years to fall in love and then two amazing people show up at once.
Without noticing, I've learnt to be cautious. I save that money because next week I could be paying my mother's rent, I wait to start that drawing because if I do it now someone will interrupt me, I don't date that person because what if that other person wants me straight after.
And sometimes, I'm right to. Sometimes I agree to a shitty house, then find a good one, and I lose a whole lot of money, and I should have waited. But, it usually works out in the end - with time.
Now all I can think of is when I was very young, in the schoolyard, watching two other kids swing a long skipping rope. It was the ultimate show of skill to run into the centre while the rope was swinging, and start jumping without missing a beat. The trick was in the timing. I'd stand on the edge when it was my turn, watching, letting my body fall into the rhythm. The window of opportunity was very small, but it came around often. But sometimes, I'd find myself stuck there, mesmerised, dismissing each turn of the rope as not quite the right timing and never making it in to the fun part.
I think, when faced with that delicate balance of wait and go, you have to just... go. Sometimes, the timing is off and you get smacked in the face with a skipping rope at great speed. But you have to hope that the momentum is enough to carry the rope around again while you're there, and next time you'll be airborne, face stinging, body weightless. Triumphant.