House Sitting, Fear, and the Word I Keep Repeating
Today I feel afraid. Nothing sudden, just quietly, the kind of fear that sits in the background while you still go about your day. I'm still house sitting, moving between other people's homes to save money, still without a place that's actually mine. And some days that's fine, practical even. Today it just feels like a reminder of how much is still unsettled.
I'm still here, after all this time, still without a place I can actually call mine. I've waited, but I haven't just waited, I've taken action too, kept moving even when nothing felt settled.
What makes it harder is doing a lot of this without much real support around me. That absence creates its own kind of restlessness, a quiet unease that isn't about any one thing going wrong, just about carrying it mostly on my own.
And still, I'm so grateful. Right now I'm staying at a friend's place, surrounded by nature, genuinely beautiful, the kind of space that feels like a small blessing in the middle of an uncertain season. I notice that too, hold both things at once, the fear and the gratitude, without needing one to cancel out the other. I'm still looking for where home actually is. I just get to look for it from somewhere lovely in the meantime.
I catch myself thinking about the future a lot lately. Where I'll actually live. What my life looks like once this in-between part is over. I'm someone who feels words deeply, more than I used to admit, and lately there's one I keep repeating to myself without even deciding to. Resilience.
I don't say it like a mantra from a poster. I say it more like a hand on my own shoulder. Not "everything is fine," because it isn't all fine yet, but "you have gotten through hard things before, and you're still here, still building, still moving toward something."
On days like this, I don't reach for a plan first. I put on music I actually love. I go outside and let the sun hit my face for a few minutes. I walk, no destination, just movement. And then I come back to something small and concrete, planning my routine for the week ahead, because having somewhere to direct my energy helps more than trying to think my way out of the fear.
Gratitude shows up in a strange place in all of this. Not gratitude for the fear, I'm not interested in forcing a kind of positivity I don't actually feel.
Gratitude for the fact that I can feel afraid and still keep going anyway. Gratitude for a friend generous enough to share her home. Gratitude that even without a permanent address right now, I have somewhere to sleep tonight, work I'm building, a body I'm learning to take care of, a mind I'm slowly training the same way I train everything else.
Resilience, for me, isn't about not being scared. It's the decision to keep looking forward anyway, to keep believing something steadier is coming, even on the days when the evidence for that is just faith, not proof. I don't know exactly when I'll have a place that's mine again. I do know I'll still be here when I do, still building whatever this practice has been quietly turning me into.
What actually excites me, even on a day like today, is this. Home was never only ever going to be an address. It's the attitude I carry into wherever I land, the one I've been building this whole time, one honest practice at a time.
That's the whole idea behind WithinOz, really. As within, so without. The home I'm looking for out there starts with the one I'm already building in here.
Some days you don't need a five-step plan. You just need one word you trust enough to repeat until you believe it again.
As within, so without.
