June 7, 2020 ☼ life

I wish my upcoming place was a straight improvement. There are a lot of things I like about it compared to my current place:

• The bedroom is an actual room with a door and a window.
• With that bedroom window, there are two open-able windows, which means I can have actual ventilation.
• It has an A/C unit.
• It has a gas range.
• It’s in a pretty quiet neighborhood, especially compared to downtown
• Light through the windows is decently mellow–good natural lighting without being overbearing, and certainly not giant RGB panels that glow all night.

but it’s not perfect:

• It’s smaller than my current apartment. They advertise as having the same square footage, but I just can’t see how that’s possible.
• It’s not just smaller in square footage–everything is smaller. The bathroom is smaller. The bathtub is smaller. The bedroom is smaller. The bedroom closet is smaller. The washer/dryer are smaller. The hallways are smaller. The windows are smaller. Everything is smaller.
• The fact that everything is smaller means that I’m going to have to get rid of some of my stuff. I have a storage bin in the garage for some low-access items which is great, but things like furniture or other large items like my keyboard are going to have to be reconsidered.
• It’s on the second floor. Most of the apartments I’ve lived in have been on relatively high floors. Now I have to worry about people outside being able to peer in through my windows.
• In fact, due to the hill it’s on, the bedroom window is actually ground level, facing a (semi-private, to be fair) walkway. Not the best for privacy/security.
• The immediate block it’s on is nice, but in a “gentrified” kind of sense. Pleasant, but a little shallow.
• While the immediate area has basic necessities (e.g. groceries), it’s totally further from “Seattle” as I know and experience it. Even now in a quarantine/protest world, I won’t be able to do things like go to H-Mart or Lil’ Woody’s anymore. I won’t be able to head over to Anchorhead to grab coffee before work anymore. I won’t be able to walk three blocks to the LINK station and go pretty much anywhere in the greater Seattle area anymore. Christ, imagine how much more difficult going to the airport will be now?
• One of the commercial streets nearby, 15th Ave, is honestly pretty run-down for the area. Perhaps it’s because of COVID-19 causing businesses to close down, but it’s not the most pleasant area.

A lot of pros are things I’ve really wanted for a while now, and I’m glad to find a place that offers them without requiring a giant rent increase, but man looking at that list I just put down those cons are non-trivial. Maybe this will be a one-year-lease kind of apartment.