Out of the Woods

I've gotten a lot of questions in the past few days about why I was staying in a hotel the other day. And I figured it was about time I answered them. As you know if you've been reading my blog, I was staying with some family friends just north of Nashville until I found a job. They live in a little house in the woods which sounds cute in theory, but here's the problem: the woods are really far away. We knew it was a bit past Nashville, but we didn't realize just how far it was. The drive took forever, and traffic was awful. (Also I seem to be allergic to the woods.) Suffice it to say, that didn't work out. But I promised some pictures of the woods, and I always keep my promises.

So there's a little peek at my first week in Nashville. It looked a lot like that. It also looked a lot like me running around like a headless chicken, trying to do five thousand things before my mom left on Saturday.

Since the woods didn't work out, we had to come up with another option. Long story short, my wonderful parents have agreed to cover the rent of an apartment for me until I find a job (which hopefully will be soon.) I couldn't get into the apartment until Monday, hence the hotel. I spent all day yesterday unloading my car, carrying boxes up stairs, unpacking things, carrying more boxes up stairs, and doing my best to set up my apartment. This last part was a bit difficult considering I have an air mattress, and basically nothing else. 90% of my stuff is still at my parents' house in Houston, where it will remain until they have time to drive it up to me. Hopefully that will only be a few weeks from now but, in the meantime, I feel like I'm squatting in my own apartment. I still have a few things left to do, but I'm more or less settled for now. The apartment is pretty cute if you ignore the fact that it's empty.

 This is the view from my front door

This is the view from my balcony

 This is the view from my balcony at night and, oh my snap, is it gorgeous. It's probably difficult to appreciate in a dark picture, but the lights shine through the trees just right and it's really beautiful. It actually took my breath away when I first saw it.

Well that's about it. I could get deep and emotional about things never being the way you expect or those moments where you feel so small. But no one really wants to read that, and I'm not in the mood to write it. But I will say it's a little lonely being on your own. I suppose that's not such a bad thing; I know a lot of growth will come in this season, and those lonely moments are the ones that drive you to your knees. But they're also the moments where you learn the sound of the voices in your head telling you that you're going to fail and that you've just made the biggest mistake of your life. I guess these seasons are defined by which voice you choose to listen to. But anyway...

Things here aren't particularly exciting at the moment; a lot of errands, cleaning, and sitting around. But they're not bad. When things finally pick up I think I'm really going to like it here. And chances are everything's going to pick up all at once like a crazy whirlwind. Maybe when that happens I'll look back and wish for the days when I didn't have so much going on. But, at least for now, I absolutely cannot wait. 

My plan is, ideally, to post something once a week. But things are sort of happening in spurts, with big gaps of absolutely nothing in the middle. So for now I'll write as things happen, and hopefully once I find some sort of routine they'll level out. For now, everything is new and strange and I have no idea whatsoever what might happen next. But I'll keep you posted!