Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

In place of Travel Tuesday this week, I need to vent a little.

Last week I sort of left you hanging, and I apologize about that. Despite the fact that we move around—quite a lot—I always forget just how long it takes to settle in to a place, and when I’m in settling in mode I let some things fall by the wayside.

As an aside, because I know some of you are wondering: I’m feeling a lot better about my choices this week. Woohoo! It doesn’t hurt that I had two shoots on the weekend and met tomorrow’s awesome wedding clients (a destination wedding couple, from Australia) over drinks yesterday. I’m busy corresponding with this weekend’s engagement shoot clients and various other photographers, and feel like I’ve got me the start of a bustling little business. So, business-wise, I’m doing great.

But. Let’s talk about settling into a new city. We have a list a mile long of moving-to-a-new-province errands. New licences, health-care cards, dentist and doctor finding, orthotics buying, joining modo (the awesome local car coop), registering businesses, getting library cards, dealing with banking issues, and … most importantly … finding a place to live.

We’re obsessed with finding a place to live. I couldn’t figure out why we were so obsessed, but the hubs hit the nail on the head one day last week while we were hungry, grumpy, and (h)angrily house-hunting. We are busy working on the top-two level’s of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, while the bottom rungs, the foundation, goes unfilled.

You know that I’m all about esteem and self-actualisation. We’re both lucky, but have never had to worry about belonging much—we’ve got great families and great friends (and great blogging communities!). But, right now, we are missing the bottom of the triangle. No home (though we are staying at Sam and Graham’s awesome condo), sporadic eating (because we’re always running around looking at viewings), and not much sleep (because I’m waking up in the middle of the night stressing about finding a place). When you look at the pyramid, it is no wonder we’re feeling discombobulated and obsessed.

We’ve looked at 17 places so far. 17. If you count the four different floor plans in one building, 21. That’s a lot of places. But it was worthwhile, we think, because yesterday we found the perfect home. It is the top two floors of a 101 year old heritage house in Kits, it oozes character, the loft space is going to be my office and craft room. There are three huge skylights, and a gigantic back porch. The kitchen and bathroom are massive. There is lots of storage and we are both in love with it.

But … (there’s always a but, isn’t there) … the landlord isn’t returning our calls or answering our emails: the tenants showed the suite, and we called him the moment we walked out, but got no answer. We kept calling and tried emailing until about 9, no answers/reply. I’m not dealing with it very well.

It’s stressful, because we’ve got a not-quite-as-awesome second choice, but aren’t ready to sign on the dotted line until we know for sure that our first-choice will go to someone else. And then we’ll spend the next several months trying to unsee what we saw at that first place.

So, this rambling post is all just to say “sorry if things are a bit light around here for the next week or so.” But, I promise to keep you posted on how it goes.

2 Replies to “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs”

  1. I feel your pain lady. House hunting in this city is NO fun. Fortunately we lucked into a really great place (through friends!) and I’m keeping my fingers crossed the landlords won’t be moving back any time soon…

    Moving stinks therefore have a glass of wine and try not to stress. Things will work out. Always do :)

    1. We are crossing our fingers that we’ll get it!! When we finally got in touch, the landlord seemed pretty interested in us this morning. He’s told us he’ll let us know tomorrow!! If not, our (new) second choice has approved us, so at least we now have a place to live. And I feel SO much better. I just really, really, want the quirky character 2 story Kits home…

      I’ve learned that house hunting is *even worse* when you are self-employed. Gah!

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