I moved four times last year, once the year before, and once the year before that. Since my last move, I’ve lived in 2 countries for at least 2 weeks. The upside of this is I really know how to pack now, and have to come understand which of my possessions are essential, and what things are nice to have.
While I’m grateful for the affordance to do this, I also have to admit some of its downsides, biggest of which is the break in routine while settling in.
It takes me a while to settle down, get accustomed to the neighborhood, start situating my usual routines in this new environment, or find similar routines that I can now explore there. In fact, one of the surest signs that I’ve settled in is when I start cooking. Home cooked food usually happens in 3-4 weeks, before that I haven’t processed the place as home yet.
In that time, my schedule is off, my daily journal typically has a lot of empty pages, and the only thing that probably doesn’t suffer is work, because work keeps all the lights and other things on.
Like beavers and magpies human beings collect knick knacks over time to make their living space more comfortable. While you can travel with some of these things, you can’t, or shouldn’t pack the whole house with you for a short stay (anything less than a year) so another downside is the loss of some of your own specific comforts gathered over time, which also makes settling in harder to accomplish.
This year, I want to get better at settling in to new places, and see if my full routines can be up and running in a week or two. I should also keep a checklist of all the essentials that help me settle in, and make sure to pack them.