Comfort/Discomfort

I have to post inspiring quotes on social media once a week for my job, and there are some that come up so often I've become tired of them. One of them in particular is:

"Life begins at the end of your comfort zone." - Neale Donald Walsch

Although I must admit I'm finding it especially relevant these days. I am, currently, at the highest peak of discomfort I have experienced upon moving to New York. In less than two weeks, I will be leaving my apartment for...some place I don't know yet in New York, hopefully another apartment, but perhaps a temporary residence of some kind. I never know what terrors New York real estate will thrust upon me each day, and yet...I have to laugh. Because, as another oft-repeated saying goes, "life is what happens when you're busy making other plans."

This is not to say, of course, that we shouldn't make other plans. But man, has there been a whole lotta life happening these days. It's like New York is reminding me, don't get too comfortable! Never get too comfortable! It's bad for your health! Then again, so is a great deal of discomfort and maybe we're best just balancing somewhere in the middle?

I see the danger in comfort, New York, don't you worry. Like a really amazing couch, you just never want to get up and do something else. Especially after you have been out having a wild experience. Haven't we all had those days where we head to the comfort of our couches to recover after one too many margaritas, martinis, Jack and Cokes, or some combination of all three? We don't realize what comfort is until we've been away from it, but at the same time if we stay there forever, the comfort loses its power and it just becomes...stasis? It's no longer invigorating, so we seek out the wildness again, and the cycle repeats.

Well, here I am, uncomfortable. What I want to do is sit at my kitchen table and do work all day, and not see another apartment, not walk 30+ block length of my neighborhood twice in another day, not call another broker on the phone who tries to hustle me into telling him what I need in an apartment when I'm only really calling to see if this one listing is available. I am trying to get comfortable with the fact that I may be sleeping on a couch in someone else's home while I continue to look for an apartment after my lease is up, just to have some semblance of hope in the dwindling abyss that is the search for a place to live. 

But then there's the comedy of it all. In some of these apartments, I have to think they surely must be kidding me. Literal thousands of dollars for this? I raise an eyebrow and walk out. At one point I even said, "The thought of living here makes me incredibly sad," only to have my thought rebuked with the catch-all, you're-an-idiot-for-not-taking-this-literal-dump phrase, "This place is gonna go quick. It will be rented tomorrow. There's not a lot with your requirements." Fine. Then someone else can live in your apartment whose windows are surrounded on all sides by brick walls and I will take up on a very comfortable park bench with all the light I want, thank you very much.

I saw another apartment today that was not what I was looking for and I heard yet again what must be the requisite phrasing cited above. "I'm not concerned," I said with a smile and walked away from a woman I felt cocking her eyebrow at me. I felt nothing, except annoyance at how much of a liar she and so many others are. Apparently I have become so uncomfortable that I have come full circle and am now just comfortable in my discomfort.

Perhaps after all of this is over I will begin one of those delightful feast-of-freelancing streaks where the universe just hands more and more goodness my way. "Oh, you just had to find an apartment in New York? My b, let me help you out with a few heaping helpings of awesome." Oh, wow, thanks universe, that would be great!

So today, as of this moment, right now, I am feeling...like I have a ton of stuff to do. I'll find a place eventually. Honestly, knowing that and believing it is half the battle.