Certain for now

I think it’s possible that one of the main reasons for some people’s unhappiness in life comes from uncertainty. Add the confusion that comes from not knowing how, precisely, to move beyond the uncertainty, and it can make for a very unpleasant time. That’s something I know far too well.

I’ve mentioned before how last year (and into this year) was a rough journey for me. When I talked about it this past February, I strongly affirmed that 2024 was “absolutely NOT unrelentingly bad,” adding that it was, “in other words, a period of time with good as well as bad—pretty much like every other time in one’s life.” Indeed.

And yet…

For at least 18 months, I was stuck in a never-ending loop of existential—actually, residential—uncertainty. I tried to answer specific questions, like, where, precisely, did I want to live? What, precisely, did I want to do with my life?

The real reason I stalled and struggled was something I wrote about barely one month into my journey, when I wrote about a stop at the supermarket, of all things:

We went into the Te Rapa New World supermarket in Hamilton, which was a store Nigel really liked. As we walked in, I was imagining going there to do my weekly shop and then I had a sudden thought: “This isn’t fun any more,” I said to myself.

The specific trigger was that I realised that’d I imagined doing a weekly shop like I always have—for the two of us. After all these years living with someone else—the majority of them with Nigel—I don’t actually have any idea how to shop for one.

For 24 years, everything in my life was about being half of a “we”, and every major decision I made was either a “we decided” thing, or, at least, something I talked over with Nigel first. Now I’m faced with numerous possibilities about my life, including its direction and, more specifically, my location. It’s been hard for me to find a way out of that.

Over the past year and a half in particular, give or take, I’ve considered any number of possibilities, including moving back to our home on Auckland’s North Shore, something I ruled out after my visit in February of last year. I also considered selling up and moving somewhere else, maybe near other family, maybe rural, maybe even an apartment, but none of the options felt right to me.

This indecision also kept me from making any improvements to my current house. Even so, I decided some months ago that I’d rearrange the furniture in the living area of my house to make it flow better and to freshen it a bit—but I did nothing about that. I was facing a sort of existential and residential stalemate.

After a LOT of thought, and also talking it over with family, I decided to commit to my current house for the next five years: I like my house itself well enough, Leo loves the yard to tun around in (one of the largest in this development, actually), and the area where I live is convenient to pretty much everywhere in Hamilton I need to go regularly. After those five years, I’ll reevaluate my situation and decide what I want to do from that point on. Cynics might say I’m just kicking the stalemate down the road to deal with later, but even if that’s true, I’m fine with it.

This decision means that I’m going to make some changes to this house to make it more of what I want it to be—including some of the things I might otherwise search for in a new house. There are two separate parts to this. First, I’m doing a bit of a refresh of the interior of my house, including that delayed rearranging of the living area, but also some relatively minor decorative changes, too. The bigger deal with be things I plan to change about the house itself, both inside and out.

The first thing will be changing the heating/cooling. Right now, I have one split-unit heat pump in the living area, and another in my bedroom. This means that rest of the house has no heating or cooling, and the two other bedrooms—the guest room and my office—are hot in the summer and cold in the winter, and so, much of the year they’re unpleasant to be in. Nigel and I had a ducted heat pump system installed in our house on Auckland’s North Shore, and the whole house was comfortable year around. That's probably what I'll do here, too.

I also plan to add a battery bank to my photovoltaic system so that I can take full advantage of the solar panels, especially by having free power at night. This will probably be a later wave of changes.

Outside, I plan on having a deck built over the existing concrete patio to raise it to the floor level of the house, because right now there’s quite a step down. I will also have a roof structure (pergola sort of thing) built over it, too, so I can use the space pretty much year round—and I won’t have to have my table and chairs under cover anymore (apart from helping to keep it clean, maybe?). This is also why changing to a new heating/cooling system will come first: The outdoor unit for the living area’s heat pump is located smack in the middle of the existing patio, and it needs to go before the new deck can be built. This is the one thing I know for certain will add value to the property.

At the moment, I think I may put raised garden beds between the lawn and the bank along the side of the property, but I’ll hold off making any final plans until I talk with the builder. I'm sure there will be other things I’ll do, too, as I get going.

So, now that I’ve (finally…) made a decision about where I’m going to live, I’m moving forward with a plan. I plan on talking about the whole thing as the parts unfold. Right now, though, the important thing is that I have a plan, and I’ve even started getting the bits and pieces I need for the house refresh.

Onward.