Tuesday, May 31, 2022

Another ending and beginning

 


    I said goodbye to the apartment that’s been my home then studio for the past fourteen years today. With Sofia’s help this morning, I moved the last of my belongings and the cats over to the house. I got the cats situated in the third floor guest room and then set off back to the apartment to clear out the rest of the things that were trash and being donated to whomever wanted what I put out on the curb, mainly a mirror and really nice table. I wish I could have found a home for the table, but I’ve had too much to deal with these past few months. I’m sure someone has already claimed it. 
    It’s going to take a while to process that I’m finally not living nor working there any more. I haven’t had a chance to really stop and think about what the ending of this chapter in my life means. Fourteen years is a long time and a lot did happen in this space. Like most of life, there were ups and downs, but overall, I enjoyed my time there. I think my deepest memories come from the lives of the cats who lived there with me and Eva. They’ve been the most consistent presence through everything that happened there. I pretty much mark my time there by the cats, more than anything else. 
    I went up to the property management office BMG (Bay Management Group) to turn the apartment keys in today and no one was in the office. This was around 4:30pm, they close at 5 and no one was there! I was livid! I called the office number that was answered by someone taking and routing calls for the office, explained the situation and he offered to call one of the people who work there that was on a site somewhere, which he did and the best the person could suggest was to mail the keys to the office. I’m not doing that because I want to hand the keys over to someone who works there. I was assured that I wouldn’t be penalized (which I shouldn’t since this is their problem). I’m just going to take them up in the morning. I’ll call first to make sure someone is in the office and to expect me.
So far, Banjo, Cooper and Sage are hanging out in the third floor guest room, getting acclimated to being in a new space. I feel so bad for them since they were so used to the old space, but I’m sure they’ll feel better as time goes on. I do feel bad that they have to stay in the one room for now, until we can move them downstairs into Sofia’s middle room and then slowly introduce them to the other cats. It’s going to be a challenge with seven cats living here, but we’ll find a way to make it work. 
My Instagram account was hacked last week. So fucking annoying! I’m not going to go into the whole scenario here because I’m really tired of thinking and talking about it. I lost access to my main art account and have attempted to get it back, but I haven’t heard anything from Facebook/Meta as to what’s going to happen next, yet. I started a new art account, but I’m really not into posting anything right now. I think the hack took the wind out of my sails regarding social media. I don’t feel the same cautious enthusiasm I’ve had in the past about it being a good tool for my art business. I lost access not only to the account itself, but all of the people I followed and who followed me. Over the years, I amassed a following of over 5,300! It took a long time to get to that point and now, that’s all but gone. If I return to posting on the regular again, I feel like it might not take as long to regain a significant following. Maybe, who knows?
As I said above, my enthusiasm for using IG and other social media sites has diminished a lot more than it has over the past few years from this one incident. This could be a good thing, as it’s making me re-evaluate how I engage with people digitally. One thought has been to revive my art blog and post there much more often than I have. I started doing that a little earlier this year, but IG pulled me right back in. I also don’t know how much people will relate to the longer form writing that I do there. It very well could be  a better way to get my thoughts out there without the constant scrolling that happens on social media. I don’t know what will work, honestly. I have a little bit of a reputation and following IG and really could/should leverage that. I seem to also be gaining a lot of followers on LinkedIn now for some reason. I don’t post there nearly as often as on IG, but my LI following has exploded recently. I don’t know what to make of this. I should make a new post there soon to keep eyes on the page. 

TM

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