awol: a quick life update

It has been a busy past few weeks. I never thought moving while studying would be this hard.

An opportunity came up to move to a different city and to a much nicer apartment that would save me a lot of headache with landlords in the future. The downside was that we had to paint the walls, lay down the floors and get our own furniture. We didn’t own any furniture until now, because all of our past apartments were rented out furnished. I’ve been spending all my free time building Ikea furniture, arranging the handyman for hanging the lights and moving. It takes time, since we don’t have a car.

And free time is hard to come by due to my studies anyway.

On the other hand, worry has been eating me away. I miss writing with my fountain pens, I miss reading all the books that I broke my back to carry, and most of all, I miss writing this blog. Over the past year it became one of the things I enjoy the most in life. I had made arrangements with Galen Leather too, I look forward to writing the reviews.

I just moved over 500 books, 150 ink bottles and more pens than I want to admit. Of course I turned this into a little experiment. No casualties except for four ink bottles that leaked. I knew that the 250ml plastic bottle of Octopus Fluids Moss Green would leak. It somehow manages to leak while standing upright. It was contained nicely. Another one was the Diamine Emerald in a Diamine 150th Anniversary ink bottle. Surprisingly, the other one of those bottles didn’t leak, only this one did. Maybe some ink had gotten to the cap threads, since the cap was on tight. The third one was also Diamine, I apparently forgot to check the cap of a 80ml bottle of Diamine Tobacco Sunburst. Fortunately, only a tiny bit seeped out into the plastic bag and not half the bottle. Last one surprised me the most, as KWZ bottles’ caps are usually pretty good. I could smell it the moment I opened the bag. KWZ Honey leaked out a tiny bit, and fortunately it didn’t get onto any other ink bottles because that batch was wrapped in bubble wrap. I still get a phantom sweet vanilla scent while walking around the house, and wonder where is that drop of Honey that I didn’t see.

Carrying the pens was easy due to Rickshaw and Galen Leather pen cases. Most of my cheaper pens stay permanently in a pencil roll anyway, so I just rolled that up and put the rest in a sturdier case. The “furniture” purchase that I looked forward to the most was a glass top pen box off of Amazon. It is too cheap, smells weird and cannot compare to all the beautiful boxes from, for example, Toyooka Craft. Combined with an Ikea Kallax unit with drawers, my stationery corner is ready to go.

For the first time in my life, I have space. Shelves to display all my books, a dark little corner for my inks and pens, a cabinet for my favourite pots and mugs. And even more space then. There are empty shelves for my future books, empty drawers to expand my ink collection. On top of everything, we can walk around the house without having to jump over rogue books or chairs.

I was living in a tiny college town before, and now moved to a bigger city where I can see the city lights again. It’s a beautiful sight in the evenings as the tops of towers disappear into the low-hanging clouds. It finally feels like the rollercoaster of the past few years might come to an end and I can concentrate on finishing college.