Day 710: A Quiet Home

I’ve been in this apartment in LA for about a month and a half now, so I thought I’d write out some thoughts on my experience so far:

I miss living in a community. I already know I enjoy living with a group of people compared to living alone or having one roommate given my past experiences in co-living houses. I just like having a variety of social interactions being easily accessible rather than having to go somewhere to get it. Moving into this two-bedroom apartment was a way for me to explore how I’d like the more traditional setup, and as much as I love my roommate Shiva, it’s only reaffirmed that I like living situations with more people.

It’s the little things: At the end of the day, I like kicking back and hearing all sorts of stories of what’s going on in others’ lives. I like stepping out of my room and having the option to join in on some silly conversation happening in the living room. Having more roommates means more random events and meeting more friends of friends. If I try a new recipe, I like having people to share it with and tell me what they think. I like home being a warm, cozy place filled with people I like coming home to. Maybe I haven’t given my current place a fair chance, but the $800/month room with a shared bathroom and the occasional rat in the shared cupboard felt more like home than this luxury apartment with beautiful appliances and bathrooms that costs three times as much.

When I agreed to get this apartment with Shiva, I expressed the concern that I might not jive with our setup because of my preference for co-living environments (and that it wouldn’t be personal), and I’m grateful that he’s been consistently open to that and is okay with us breaking our lease if need be.

So why not break the lease and find a community to live in? Several reasons:

Cost: It’d cost Shiva and me a bit over $10,000 to break the lease, and I want to make sure I’m confident that I can’t make this situation work before eating that cost.
Convenience: Finding another place to live and dealing with moving just sounds like a pain in the butt, especially since we went out and furnished the whole place.
Doubt: I’m sure I’m especially sensitive to the dearth of positive social interactions because I don’t yet have a consistent social life here. Would I still feel this way if once I have a decent number of friends who I’m seeing regularly? Maybe, but not sure.

Shiva is going back home for the holidays tomorrow and will be gone for the rest of the month, so I’m pretty sure I’m going to feel this even more strongly over the next several weeks as I come home to an empty apartment every day. Which means I’ll either have to start making local friends fast or by the time he comes back, I might be ready to throw in the towel.

In retrospect, it would have been prudent to trust my gut feeling and stick with the original plan for getting an Airbnb for two months to feel out what it’d be like (1) living in LA and (2) living in a two-person home rather than committing to a year-long lease and making it costly in both time and money to reverse the decision. When we were looking around, Shiva and I felt pressure from the leasing office here telling us that all two-bedrooms would definitely be occupied in a few months, which induced a strong scarcity-mindset and led us to sign the lease. Had I known that there would in reality still be many two-bedrooms available, I definitely would’ve felt this out more rather than jumping in. Lesson learned: Don’t make decisions with a scarcity-mindset. (Obviously much harder to do in practice because when you’re in the scarcity-mindset, your justifications sound perfectly rational.)

Current plan: Make friends then re-evaluate