Home is where the heart is…

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how one’s home environment can greatly affect one’s creative energy. Over the past two-plus years, I have become more and more disaffected by the place where I live, a oldish, sorta run-down garden-style apartment. Friends have noticed how my demeanor has taken a turn for the worse.

Why? Let me count the ways:

• A half-dozen yapping dogs whose owners walk them outside my bedroom window, on the ground floor, and wake me up early in the morning and late at night.
• The way that the front lawn outside my apartment has become the complex’s sports park, in spite of the large open field and playground equipment available at the back of the complex.
• The regular banging and yelling that accompanies the basketball games at the hoop in the parking lot outside my balcony.
• Walls so paper thin you can hear people vacuuming or using a rowing machine—in the adjacent building!

I used to enjoy sitting out on my balcony after work, sipping a cocktail and reading; that pleasure lost its allure when a new tenant started teaching his son to throw a football or hit a baseball literally at the foot of my balcony, and when I got to “enjoy” the parade of dogs doing their duty 10 yards in front of me.

I moved in 10 years ago, and the rent was reasonable for the area. But in the past two years, the annual rent increase was over 5%, much higher than the local norm, and way beyond the quality of the physical plant. Seriously, a $105 increase when I could invite someone from the CDC to discover new life forms in the grout in the bathroom floor tiles? When I had to install two layers of batting inside my bedroom window to try to block out the barking so I could get a good night’s sleep? And to be told that because the dog owners paid pet rent, that they could violate the noise provisions of the lease, but I couldn’t use a bark control device?

In short, I reached the breaking point and found a nice updated condo to move into, in a high-rise with no pets allowed, for only about $80 more a month. In fact, it’s more than $100 less than what my current place will charge for my apartment after they “renovate” it (the maintenance engineer, eyes rolling, told me the renovation entailed oak cabinets in the kitchen and new tile on the bathroom floor, like that will really make a big difference in the quality of life).

So, after dealing with the hassle and big expense of moving, and all the attendant anxiety over the next five weeks, I’m anticipating that once again, I will look forward to going home at night and that my creative juice will be replenished.