Settling into the new apartment

Yesterday my flatmate moved in and so there were a lot of decisions to be made about where to put stuff. I also started unpacking the pictures from their boxes and throwing the empty boxes into the loading bay for recycling. I completed numerous trips down in the lift to the second floor where the loading bay entrance is located. You might think there are better ways to get rid of empty boxes, such as returning them to the removalists or putting them up on a website so that someone else can use them, but with two people in the apartment, now, space is really at a premium. Every spare inch of vacant space that can be generated is a blessing. The boxes get thrown away as soon as they are empty.

I suppose that one question people might have is how am I feeling now that I am relocated in Sydney - home of my memories - and in fact I had lunch with a friend on Thursday and that's exactly what he asked. It's hard to answer that question. In one sense I feel privileged to be able to live in such a nice location, and so I feel a bit guilty and then worried that some accident is going to take it all away. That's the paranoia associated with schizophrenia kicking in. It really is a nice place. The apartment has views of the city skyline and I can see the new towers of Barangaroo rising in the distance. So if you were to ask me how I feel I would probably answer that I feel anxious.

But on top of that I feel frustrated because there is still a lot of sorting and arranging to do. The books, for example. When the removalists first brought everything of mine into the apartment they put a lot of boxes of books in the second bedroom - where my flatmate now lives - because the designated "library" was getting so full and nothing more could fit in there by a certain point in time. Then to get my flatmate installed we had to move those boxes of books out of the second bedroom and into my bedroom, so I now have towers of book boxes all over the place in there. The book situation is compounded by the fact that I had to leave two bookshelves on the Coast as they wouldn't fit in the lift of my old building to get them out. So I'm short two bookshelves and I have a bedroom full of books.

On Monday the picture hanger comes so that we can get the pictures off the floor and onto the walls. It will make a lot of difference once that is done. Then I can move a bit more freely.

As for what I will do now that I am installed in Sydney, it's hard to say. I have been thinking about taking up freelance journalism seriously again so that I can engage more with the world and earn some income. But then I think about how many trips I will be making to the nursing home to see mum. I haven't worked out how often that trip will be made, but because I continue to feel guilty about her being in there I feel obliged to do as much visiting as I can. That's not the only reason to go there, of course. I do like just sitting down with mum in her room and having a chat about my problems. There's something comforting about this way of going about things.