I have always been bad at making decisions. I blame being the 3rd of 4 children born to relatively passive parents, who rarely forced their will upon the family at large, choosing instead to counsel us, like adults.
Of course, there was some hollering, some wooden-spoon spanking, and other light-handed punishment whose main effect was the anticipation of the act. Merely waiting for your punishment was pain enough!
So, when making big decisions; I clam up. I take the easy way out. I close my eyes and plunge ahead, blindly. I stay the course. I avoid the decision. This year, we decided was going to be the year we moved on. We'd find a bigger city, a better place, a house-share or urban plot, mother-in-law apartment, or rented bedroom. We wanted public transit, developed food culture, and all those other yuppie accoutrements that I read about in the New Yorker.
But life has a funny way of spinning things, and I fell into a job in Broad Ripple, an opportunity that we rolled with (see above about not making decisions). When, this Summer, a place to live near work materialized through an acquaintance–we made the plunge, despite it's lack of...finished-ness.
Yeah, it needs a roof. A bathroom doorknob. More than 18 inches of kitchen counter-space. New windows. And that's for starters...
But the location is divine. After 5 years of only being within walking distance of a Hardee's & Sysco greasy spoon...I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm an East-sider for life now, having served 5 years of listening to neighbors scream at each other, watch drunks lurch down the middle of the street, and having the worst grocery around just down the block. But now?
Bike to work. I can walk to get my growler filled. I can pop in at LUNA and flip through fresh stacks. Restaurants without value meals exist. I think our quality of life almost immediately doubled. After all, what good is living in the city when you still have to drive anywhere you want to go? That's no city to me, and was a main impetus for leaving Indianapolis. Till it snagged me by my carabiner.
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