Day 31 of 31: Do You Like Living Alone?

“Risk it all,

Cause I’ll catch you if you fall—wherever you go!

If my heart was a house, you’d be home.”

                                                --Owl City, “If My Heart Was a House”

            Last post! :)
            It started like this...

            And now it's this!

            Thank you to everyone who prayed for me and blessed me with gift cards and housewarming gifts! Thank you for reading the blog and encouraging me along the way! Thank you!!

            And now what else is there to say?

            Over the last 6 months, I’ve written about how God told me to build my house, money stress, being single, inching my way through grad school, working with my dad at church, mydesire to do foster care, and even the most important thing I’ve learned from Beth Moore.  

            So how do I gracefully close this blog?  I thought about doing a review, but I have to be real and say that as someone who teaches from our children’s curriculum every Sunday, I am a firm hater of review lessons.  It’s so hard to make review lessons interesting, and they're craving something new—whether they know it or not.

            So here’s my last blog post (maybe I’ll do a different blog next fall?).  Here’s my last speaking-in-real-time written offering for you…

            I’ve been living alone in my house for about 9 weeks now.  This week I came across an article called “5 Weird Personality Changes That Happen When You Live Alone.”[1] I chuckled as I read through them…

1. There are no surprises.

            Everything is always just the way I left it—no better, no worse.

2. There are such things as two-person jobs.

            I have to ask for someone to come over to help with simple things, such as carrying a heavy box or hanging curtains. Also, when I wanted to get the above photo of me holding the thank you sign, I had to ask my mom to come over in the morning before I left for work so she could take the photo. 

3. You will think too much.

            Yes, absolutely.  The rest of this post will hint at this.

4. You will talk to yourself.

            I laughed out loud when I read the author describe the things he talks to himself about.  It’s the kind of things you would usually remark to whoever is standing there, so you go ahead and say aloud to yourself… “These chips are really good” and “Where’s my phone? I thought I laid it down right here.”

5. You don’t know how to shop.

                                  I thought I knew what kind of things I should buy to eat and fix for my      meals, but I was wrong.  Things go bad because I don’t eat them fast enough. I hate throwing away food. I never had that problem when I lived with my parents and brother; Dave will eat anything you leave in the fridge. Now I buy more nonperishables and frozen food than I was used to eating because I have not yet mastered knowing what and how much to buy.

            Living alone is an interesting scenario for someone who grew up in a big family.  For years now, I have wondered how I would react to living by myself.

            When I was a freshman in college, a group of my friends went to this lady’s house who lived near campus.  This young woman was probably about 5 or 6 years older than me.  She worked at the college, and she lived in a small house by herself.  She invited us over for brunch, and we ate this grape salad that I have such fond memories of, but have never been able to find the recipe for. 

            As we finished the dishes, I asked this young female homeowner, “Do you like living alone?” 

            My other friend heard me ask the question, and she shot me a glare that said, How dare you ask her that! 

            But I wasn’t intending to be insensitive.  I seriously wanted to know if she liked living alone.  I guess I figured I’d be in that situation one day, and I was curious to hear her perspective. 

            The lady smiled and gave me a super sweet, genuine answer that I wish I could remember.  But I can’t recall her exact words—just her honest smile and something about God providing for her every need.

            One of my friends told me this week that she sees this time in my life as the quiet before the noise.  Compared to the last 26 years of my life, my life is quiet right now.  No noise besides the clothes tumbling in the dryer and the thoughts tumbling in my mind.  For a month, the only sound was my iTunes.  Then I bought a TV.  So now if I want to break the silence—if I’m bored with the quiet or if my mind needs a break from thinking and analyzing, I turn on the TV or blast my music. 

            I like the quiet in my house, but it’s almost eerie—it’s certainly unfamiliar.  For 26 years, my every day was lived with others—my parents and siblings and my college roommates.  Even if we didn’t talk much on some days, I was still aware of their concerns.  And without knowing when I’d pick them up or set them down, I’d carry their daily concerns with me because that’s what you do when you sit next to someone on the couch at night and heat up leftovers together and hear their car leave in the morning.  You carry their concerns because you see their eyes and you know what they’re saying and what they’re not saying. 

            During the last 6 years, my friend Erin and I often discussed whether we’d like to live together.  I was all for it.  I had a positive roommate experience in college, and I knew Erin was someone who I’d enjoying sharing space with.  Erin even went with me to look at houses.

            But Erin was a bit more hesitant about it—probably because I drive her nuts sometimes. ;) As we talked about whether to live together, I told her that I was afraid that I’d become self-centered if I lived alone.  It only made sense to me.  Because I love “alone time” so much, if I lived by myself, I would begin to be confronted only with my problems and my thoughts, and I wouldn’t be as quick to think about others.  

            Some of my family members and friends were expressing their concerns to me about living by myself, and I’d roll my eyes and say, “I’ll be fine!”  But to Erin, I’d share that other side of me that wondered if—if I wasn’t careful, if I wasn’t intentional, if so much alone time would backfire on me.  

            When it came time to make our decisions, Erin and I decided to buy separate houses. We have celebrated with each other and are still the best of friends. We get to discuss this season of life with each other.

Erin & I at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway

            One day this summer, I texted Erin to see if she wanted to go with me to see The Band Perry and Justin Moore in concert. I met her at her house that night to go to the concert at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  It was the night before the Brickyard. We got there just in time to see the end of the Nationwide race…also just in time to see the first lightning in the sky. 

            We could see the storm coming, so we sat in this underground hallway where the media stations have their meeting rooms.  They said the concert would be delayed due to the storm, so we sat there for 20 minutes…30 minutes…an hour.  Other people started leaving, but I was determined to stay just in case the concert would start late.

            “We’re not leaving,” I told Erin. 

            After sitting on the concrete for an hour, we saw a golf cart that no one was using.  We sat on the back of the golf cart, thankful for a cushioned seat.  Another hour passed.  We played 20 questions a few times.  Some drunk guys hit on us a few times.  Erin pulled up Spotify on her phone, and we jammed to some songs that were popular when we were in junior high.   

            Even though I was out-of-my-mind disappointed that the concert was going to be canceled, I was enjoying the time with Erin.

            That night as we sat on the golf cart, Erin asked me, “Remember when you said you were afraid that the alone time would get to you if lived by yourself?” 

            I nodded. 

            She said, “I know what you mean now.”  She’d been living in her house for 6 weeks—long enough to have tasted the quiet.

The night I ALMOST got to see The Band Perry. But don't worry--I have tickets for their next show.

            About 2 weeks after I moved into my house, Erin came over one Saturday night.  We had dinner together and then sat on the couch drinking the fancy hot cocoa Erin made.  Erin asked me, “How are you handling the alone time? Have you been lonely?”

            I giggled and said that it was too soon to feel lonely. And now I’ll add that I live too close to family to feel lonely.  I don’t know what I’d do if I took a job by myself out of state and lived alone in a new town—I’m thankful God didn’t ask me to do that.  Today as I was driving to work, I realized that while I can already tell there are a few things I wished I would have done differently with my house, there is one thing that I got perfectly right: the location.  Living a mile and a half from my parents, my sister and her family, my grandma, and 2 sets of aunts and uncles was the best decision I could have made. 

            So as I talked with Erin, I talked less about loneliness and more about the quiet and how alone time requires a different set of skills.

            It’s not that we don’t enjoy the alone time—because we do.  It’s just that there’s zero accountability for how I spend my time, there’s no motivation outside of myself, and there’s no one around to wake me up when I fall asleep on the couch.  It’s not that the quiet isn’t soothing—because it is.  It’s just that I can get a little too comfortable and forget to care about helping others.  It’s not that I feel lonely—because I don’t.  It’s just that I know it’s odd, of course it’s odd, that my conversational needs are being fulfilled by getting wrapped up in the lives of the characters in my favorite TV series.  (It’s so tempting, right?!) 

            Living alone reminds me of the difference between onsite college courses and online college courses and what it takes to be successful in each.  I never noticed the inherent benefits of the classroom setting until after I had endured a few semesters of online classes.

            When I take an onsite college course, I sit there, passively listening, as the prof gives the lecture and explains the assignment.  But when I take an onsite class, I have to take the initiative, turn my brain on, and read through the coursework a few times to understand what the prof means and what the prof expects from me.

            When I take an onsite college course, I get participation points for just sitting in the desk and for doing my fair share on a group project.  In class, I get to hear what my classmates think of the class, what they are doing their papers on, etc.  But when I take an online course, I earn participation points by reading what 3 of my classmates wrote for that assignment and then writing out at least 100-word responses to each of them…for every. single. assignment. of. the. semester. 

            Then the most important one: How I treat deadlines!  For an onsite class, if I turn in something late, I have to walk up to my prof, look her in the eye, and give her the reason why it’s late.  But for an online class, I don’t have to look my prof in the eye or explain anything; I just accept the late penalty and then move on.  I never turned in an assignment late for an onsite class.  But with the online courses (especially during the latter half of the semester), I turned in at least one late assignment each week. 

            That’s because self-discipline is rough.  Sitting in my PJs with my laptop in a room by myself is nice, but it does not produce the motivation and encouragement that being with a real prof and real classmates does.

            Because I lived in the online-classes-world for about 4 years, I feel like the same self-discipline is required of me now when living alone.

            Of course, living alone is easier because I have no “distractions,” and no peeps who want me to cook for them, so I can just eat a bowl of cereal and skip the dishes if I want.

            But in a way, it’s harder because I am a steward of this time, and if you believe that time is just as important than money, then you know that it’s a big responsibility because I will give an account to God for how I spend my time and money.  

            The TV is off tonight, so there’s no noise besides my icemaker and the Owl City songs playing from my laptop as I type. No noise besides the clothes tumbling in the dryer and the thoughts tumbling in my mind.  It’s my quiet before the noise, my cocoon from the elements, and I’m thankful for it.

            As I’ve been writing this, God reminded me that one evening this summer, after the framing had gone up on my house, I sat down on the wood that framed my back porch. It was so quiet, and I began praying and thanking God for my house.  That night I wrote in my prayer journal that I hoped I could have another thousand “quiet evenings” there to spend with God.  It seems that I am getting my wish, that this quiet is a gift, and it’s up to me to make this time into a gift to give back to my God. #seeingtheunseen

P.S. Here's my very first post if you'd like to see how this got started: Blog Prologue: Welcome to My House Building.

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[1] Gladstone. (2014).  “5 Weird Personality Changes That Happen When You Live Alone.” http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-weird-personality-changes-that-happen-when-you-live-alone/.