Here it is, my appartment. My first rental appartment. My first steps as an “adult”. And yes I use quotations because, when does a human being really feel like an adult? When they become parents? Not even then? This appartment comes with a decent sized bathroom, small kitchen and a balcony overlooking a playground. Somehow I find it comforting to hear childrens’ voices. Whatever is going on in the world, children still love to play.

This is the living room / bedroom / office. All furniture is old except for the white table (from IKEA). The couch is actually green but I threw a blanket over it. Makes it softer and is an easy way to NOT buy a new couch just because of the awful color.

It hasn’t been too lonely. In general I like to be “alone” and do my own thing..whether it is cooking, baking, watching TV, listening to music… though I do miss the “sharing” part. When I lived with my parents my mom always yelled at me from downstairs to “watch that TV channel, there’s an interesting documentry airing right now!!!” and me asking dad if we could watch a few songs of that live DVD again…

Though, as of now, I see my friends far more often. I have people coming over almost daily to hang out. Next weekend two of my pals are coming over for a sleep-over and a full party weekend. Before that, on thursday, a childhood friend is coming over. And then after the weekend, on monday, one of my closest friends is coming over for a pizza+movie night. And the list goes on and on. That just wouldn’t be possible if I’d still live at my parents house. I wouldn’t want to burden them with.. entertaining guests, sort of speak.

Only few more weeks until Uni continues again. I have to say I have kind of missed the structured life of going to classes in the morning. Not to say that it wouldn’t be great if I would be working full time by now.. but I like my three dimentional life (school, work, personal life). When you take school out of the picture life just gets dull.

The winds of change are blowing. Seems like everything is happening at once. As usual, big changes in your life don’t usually come alone. As I’ve written before, I graduated with a bachelors degree in computer science. This, however, does not mean the end of school for me. In Finland it is more common to continue for your masters degree in this stage than to move onto the work life. I’ve also tried to search for an appartment, to buy not to rent. But I realized that in this stage, I don’t have a full time job yet, I should settle for something less. So I am throwing my money away for rent. Yes, I’m moving out from my parents’ house next month. The new rental flat is actually very familiar to me. One of my closest friends is currently living there, and moving out to live together with her boyfriend. The flat is also relatively close to my parents’ house so it won’t be a huge change of scenery for me. The bus routes to work and school are also much better than from my parents’ house.

That’s that. Going up on the educational level and also going up in the ‘adult’ status – moving out on my own. As if this wasn’t enough. I see a light in my life. A light that I’ve wished and hoped for for some time now. Something or someone. And I’m probably jinxing it just by mentioning this here. I guess it’ll be interesting to know where this is heading..if anywhere. Or at least enjoy the ride.

Nope, life’s certainly not boring right now. It’s actually a little bit stressful. There is new winds blowing in many areas of life – work, education, personal life… I can handle stress pretty good. Because if one area goes bad (for example failing a class at Uni) then I have other areas of life that are going well. Right now, every puzzle of the game is shifting and moving around. It’s scary, but it’s also what I need right now. It’s sort of like graduating high school all over again. Going to the world alone.

Got any tips/advice for someone moving out for the first time? Or sharing your experiences would be fun to hear too :)