I Got 99 Problems, and My Kitchen Cabinet Was One.
I live in an apartment. There are good things to be said about not owning a house (if you could even afford one in today’s market) and I try to look at the silver lining:
My stay is flexible, and I can stay as long as I want with less of a commitment. I don’t have to pay things like property tax, and my living expenses are generally predictable. I don’t get raped by changing mortgage rates like my brother and his girlfriend who just bought a house; they haven’t even lived there for a year and it’s gone up over a thousand dollars a month.
If something gets broken, it’s not my responsibility to fix. Heck, I probably shouldn’t even try to fix it, since I’m liable to leave it in worse shape. When I moved into the apartment I live in now, it was the first time I truly lived on my own without any roommates. Although I have confidence as an independent woman, I humbly accept my shortcomings, and I didn’t even trust myself with a drill for seemingly menial tasks like putting up curtain rods (I waited until my ex-fiancé could supervise me).
Flash forward a year later and the door of my kitchen cabinet started to fall off. Every time I opened it to get a mixing bowl or a strainer, the metal latches pulled away from the cheap wood. I told the superintendents of the property about it, but due to some unsavory behaviour from the previous one, they were switching hands, and no one really got back to me about it. They wrote it down—pretending to give a shit—and I kept reminding them with notes wrapped around my monthly rent cheques that I would drop in the office mailbox:
“Hello! Friendly update from apartment 7 . . . as per my work-order, the hinges of my cabinet are precariously close to detaching. Please call me if you have any questions.“
Eventually, the door fell right off. Good riddance to the thing, I thought, but I felt strangely exposed . . .
My cannabis use usually helps blunt the anxiety of change (no pun intended), but I’m still learning how to embrace it, allowing new challenges to roll off my back like water droplets. Thankfully, it was instinctual in this case, to focus on the good that came with it:
No longer do I get assaulted by the door’s vengeance as I duck under to grab the sporadically-used blender or rice cooker.
No longer does it fall against my leg each time I open it to put something back under its sheltered confines.
It doesn’t jam the other drawers, leaning against them as it did, when gravity pulled the latches away from their grip on the wood frame.
Despite the fear I had of my cats exploring the newly exposed space and getting their butts on everything, I have chosen to embrace the good. And it is freeing.
I think the lesson here is, instead of stubbornly trying to fix something that doesn’t work, see the positivity in change. If possible, embrace it.
Either that, or deny plausibility and leave your problems for someone else to fix.