Moving Home

We’re moving next week and I’m nervous. Yesterday my wife and I are signed a 12 month lease for a flat that she hasn’t seen. I’ve seen it before; it’s a great flat that has everything we were looking for in a flat, but my wife couldn’t go and see it when it was open for inspection. I made it, by myself, to the 15-minute window that it was open for. I told her about it and showed her some pictures I took on my mobile phone. So she has decided to take my word on it and trust me.

It’s the ‘trust me’ part that’s making me nervous. I’m not sure I trust me to make the right decision on where we should live for the next year. Why the hell is she trusting me? It’s not that I’ve made bad choices in the past. Sure we previously lived in a flat below a mad man and that was primarily my fault but apart from that one time and the flat that we moved to because I liked it (even though it didn’t have central heating and was in London in the winter) I think I’ve made good choices. Sure those 2 flats do account for roughly 6 of the 8 years we’ve been together but let’s not get bogged down with statistics.

So yesterday we signed the lease. I had a few sleepless nights wondering if I noticed everything that I was supposed to notice when I walked around the flat during the inspection but now I’m fine. She’s going to trust me and I’m just going to have to deal with the consequences if I’m wrong. They say that you only regret the things you don’t do. That’s bullshit; it’s entirely possible to regret the shitty flat that you’re stuck in because you signed a 12 month lease without checking with your wife first.

What you have to understand is that I saw it at the end of a very stressful day. I had seen 7 other flats in the 3 hours before I saw this place. She had seen them with me but for the last flat she went to one and I went to the other because they were open at the same time. I know it sounds like I’m making excuses for something that might be okay, but I don’t have a history of making decisions by myself. I don’t like to do it. I am the guy who looks at every shirt in the shop and then still asks the shop assistant to decide for me.

Decisions stress me out. Especially decisions that affect someone else. And even more so when that someone else is my wife. She isn’t someone who holds a grudge but you’d have to be a saint to live somewhere you hated for a year and not mention it at least once. Let’s hope I’m right.

Earlier I said that there was only a 15-minute window to see the flat. That’s how it is in Sydney. The estate agent will open a property for 15 minutes and everyone who wants to see the place has to all walk through together and step around each other to see it. It’s awful. Maybe I’ve grossly underestimated the value of a real estate agent’s time but surely they can spare a little longer than 15 minutes. Sure there are exceptions but if I was to tell you that an estate agent could only open the property for 15 minutes because they were doing volunteer work for orphans you’d be rightfully surprised.

For the record, that orphan line above probably took the longest amount of time to write out of all of the sentences I’ve written since starting to write a blog. It’s amazing how even the most mundane task still seems out of reach of an estate agent. I wanted the statement to be far fetched so I went with ‘volunteer work for orphans’ but if I’m being honest, ‘not stealing from a blind man’ still seems like a fairly noble task for an estate agent.

On a closing note: sorry I haven’t been writing this blog as regularly as I was before. It’s this whole moving thing, plus I’ve been a bit sick, plus I’m a lazy lazy man. I’ll be back to my weekly blog writing from now on…

Work Life Balance

Someone needs to figure this out because I just can’t see how it works. Everything that you want to do in Sydney costs a disproportionate amount of money. So in order to do anything you’ve got to have a job and preferably a well-paid job. But in order to keep this well-paid job you have to work so many hours that you don’t have the time to actually do the things you want to do.

I’m pretty lucky, I’ve got a relatively good job that pays okaynand I’m also fortunate enough to make a little extra money from stand up. This should enable me to have a pretty awesome time in Sydney. But it doesn’t actually work that way. Because, like so many others, I’m always so busy or tired from work that I don’t get to do the things I’d like to.

Toady I’m tired because I did get to do something I wanted to. Yesterday I went indoor rock climbing. Which is something that I haven’t done for about 18 months. However I maintain that I wouldn’t feel so physically wrecked from it if I had had more time to go rock climbing for the last 18 months.

This blog isn’t meant to be a complaint. By knowing what’s going on in the rest of the world I’m feeling really lucky to have a job. I’m currently enjoying stand up and the creative process more than I think I ever have before. So I am having a good time, I’m just not getting out very often.

So what happens when we’re stuck at work and can’t get out to do the fun things we’d rather be doing? Quite simply, we spend money on shit we shouldn’t feel we need. We have a long train commute to work so we spend a fortune on an iPad to entertain us while we sit on the train. We have to drive to work every day so we spend way more money on a car because we feel you should have a nice car since we spend so much time in it. Rushing into work for a meeting so you don’t have the time to make your lunch in the morning, no problem, you make good money so you’ll just buy your lunch every day.

Why do people need a massive TV? So they can have that cinema experience at home. Why do people want the cinema experience at home? Because they’re so tired when they come home from work that they don’t want to then go out again to go to the cinema. But if they worked less they wouldn’t be able to afford the over-priced cinema ticket anyway, they’d just sit at home with a small TV.

I’m not sure what the answer is. Maybe we don’t need all of these things. Maybe we should work less and enjoy the company of our friends and family more. Make sacrifices in our careers and devote some time to us. Would we really be any worse off?

I write this blog sitting in a room alone in between editing a sitcom script and working on some stand up that I didn’t have time to write out this week because I was so busy with work. I’m typing on my laptop while simultaneously charging my iPhone and eReader whilst also listening to music on my iPod through noise cancelling headphones. I don’t have all (or any) of the answers and I’m a great big hypocrite. It’s something to think about anyway.