We moved house - quick lessons about change

We moved house at the weekend. Given this blog’s reoccurring theme of change I thought its worth recording some of the things going through my mind.

Firstly, it was painful to leave the old place, I’d owned it for over 8 years and it was “home” - even when I was in California and the place was rented out.
Lesson: Giving things up is hard.

The new place is good: its bigger. But its not just about living in a larger apartment/flat I’ve moved because I want to make a life with my girlfriend. We didn’t just change for the sake of change, we changed because our lives have changed.
Lesson: Untangling cause and effect is difficult.

We’re hear and moving is just the start of the change. Although we have lived together for over two years we are now joint owners. We share responsibility. I have to adapt to this in all sorts of ways.
Lesson: Changing one thing is just the start of a chain of changes.

The new place isn’t home yet. Our stuff looks a bit out of place. Coming home after the office is strange. And we see all sorts of things we want to change. This is despite spending most of the weekend cleaning and unpacking. Thing is, it takes time to make something your own.
Lesson: You need to do things your own - ownership it important.

There is also an identity thing at work here. I was the old place, the new place... well I don’t know who I am here yet.

Our big adventure started on Friday morning. I woke up with a cold that I’m still trying to shake off. I can’t help feeling the two are related. The stress of the move? The worry? Perhaps this lowered my immune systems.
Lesson: Mental and physical are interrelated.

As most people do we engaged the services of professionals for our move. The legal people seemed to drag things out, one of the real estate agents involved was difficult, the other was fine. The removals firm where great.
Lesson: professionals don’t have all the answers, you can outsource a lot of this but you still need to manage them.

Unfortunately, due to the craziness of the British telephone system we are without broadband internet. This will probably be the case for another week or so. That’s doing to restrict my surfing, blogging, e-mailing and what else. Maybe some good will come of it!
Lesson: the rest of the world can’t move at your pace

Its been over two years since I last used a dial up connection. I can’t imagine how I lived with this all the time! Truth is, we didn’t do half the things we now do online. You come to realise how much you need fast internet.

These are just my initial thoughts - quick and dirty. I’m sure there is a lot more about change I could learn from this experience. I’ll keep thinking about it and let you know - who knows, I might even be able to relate some of these points back to business and software development!