House, work, relationships and life

As I stated in the last post, a lot has happened in the past several months. I am in two minds about how much personal stuff I feel comfortable divulging on here. On the one hand, I don't think anyone I know in real life reads this. I could also probably benefit from being a less private person and sharing my feelings more. On the other hand, I *am* a private person, I do find it hard to share and I am conscious that if someone who knows me came across the blog, it wouldn't be hard to work out and confirm who I am. With this in mind, here is a some-hands-bared account of my personal life over the last 9 months!

(1) The most exciting development is that I bought my first home. It is a townhouse in a suburb not too far from the city. It's an older house (with the maintenance issues which come with that) but is very liveable, and having been there for a few months now, I am starting to really feel at home. I furnished it almost completely with second hand furniture sourced on Gumtree. Here are a few cheeky snaps of the decor, and I will share more in a separate post:

It definitely has a vintage feel and is very 'girly' according to the boy. I don't think there are any bargains to be had in the Perth housing market at the moment, but I'm happy with what I paid for it. My only regret is not insisting on my rights at the pre-settlement inspection, I ended up allowing myself to be bulldozed by the bitchy real estate agent acting for the seller who did her utmost to shut me down and make me feel stupid whenever I raised an issue. My lack of persistence in this regard resulted in me not following up on some things I had gut feelings on, and the result is that I'll need a new air conditioning system installed (for which I have been quoted $4k) and a few other things. On the other hand, I paid $8k less than what I was ultimately willing to offer for the house so it evens out in the end, and I know I won't make the same mistakes with my next purchase (I will be pushy and bitchy in equal parts back!)

(2) The other major development is my relationship with the boy. We met when I moved back to Perth from Canberra last year (so about 11 months ago now) and took things slowly. I didn't tend to see him during the week during my previous job, as it was just so demanding and draining. If I ever got out of the office at a decent hour, I would just want to crash into bed straight away. Now that I have time on my hands, the dynamics have definitely changed. We are seeing each other a lot during the week and have gotten closer. I still feel like we're in 'early days' and not where we'd otherwise be after 11 months, because we hadn't really started combining our lives until recently.

This relationship is teaching me a lot about myself. I don't like to open up and share, and I find it really hard to reveal my true feelings, especially when I am feeling sad or down. I respond by being moody and isolating myself. I also think that I'm afraid of commitment. This is unusual for the female I think, it's more common with the guy. My stand-offishness and reluctance to give of myself is probably what snared me the boy in the first place though, as he had to work hard for my affections (and who isn't tempted by a bit of a game?). Until now, my relationships have not felt serious and so I did not put any pressure on myself to be 'sure' or question whether it felt 'right'. Now, many of my friends are getting married and having babies - partly due to that, our relationship feels 'real' and like it could or should be final.