Transitions

Have you heard of William Bridges' Transitions Model? Basically any change that happens compromises of three phases - Ending, The Neutral Zone, New Beginning. Sounds simple but what it means is that even thoughchange can happen overnight, i.e. you can move from one house to the next, change jobs, separate from a partner etc, the psychological aspect of change takes longer. This is where the three phases of transition come in.

The neutral zone is the hard part. It's where the old thing isn't relevant or existent anymore but the new beginning hasn't taken shape yet. So you kind of hang around in this strange limbo for a while feeling like nothing really fits or sticks. It can be easy to grab onto anything just to feel like you have a direction again but that can be a danger. You have to go through the whole uncomfortable nothing-ness of the neutral zone before you are ready to start again.

So I think we're just beginning to head into the neutral zone. We're going through the motions of finding a house, enrolling Annabelle at kindy, enrolling me at uni... but it all feels like I'm organising someone else's life because I haven't really got into the swing of anything yet.

So on the subject of HOUSE, we had decided to look out in the western suburbs for easy access to both UQ (since all three of us will be attending there on some or all days of the week) and my parents in Toowoomba. Mel found a great house at Jamboree Heights and it's all been approved but it isn't available until mid-August and I really feel like I want to be in our own place sooner rather than later. Staying with friends when you have a small child is quite an imposition and 3 weeks is too long to impose. I also want to unpack all my stuff and get my shop going again. So that, combined with the fact that I think the location is just a bit too far out for my liking means that I decided to spend a couple of days looking for something a bit closer before signing on the dotted line for Jamboree Heights.

I've found a huge HUGE house at Chapel Hill for a good price. Huge being four bedrooms plus rumpus plus extra storage room, 2 bathrooms, 3 toilets, double lock up garage. It's massive. Its downside is that it's quite "original" (brown and yellow feature strongly in the decor) but that's ok. The thing that mainly puts me off it is that I've never lived out there and don't know the area at all. I'd get to know it of course, so it's still an option. We are deciding whether to put in an application today.

The other one I've found is not so big but is a reburbished place in Alderley about six streets away from good friends of ours (the ones we will be staying with). It's handy to transport and shops and we know the area a lot better. It's just had an enormous deck put on it so even though the house is small it has a good outdoor area. Its downside is that it has zero storage space. No lock up garage, no shed. And only 3 bedrooms so nowhere for our camping stuff, bikes, Annabelle's old baby stuff (that I'll need for the next baby when the time comes) etc. But we think if we get a garden shed from Bunnings we can overcome that.

Our heart is with the Alderley one. Here it is:




We have put in an application on that one so we'll see how that goes. Both of them are available now so we could get our furniture brought up next week instead of waiting three more weeks.

In other news, we took a City Cat ride to the uni yesterday and took Annabelle to see her new kindy. She will go 2 days a week to Campus Kindy. It's a proper C&K kindy program but with long daycare hours (bonus) and it's next to Mel's building so very handy, especially since I'll be doing some study at UQ too. She absolutely LOVED it. Even though we were just popping in to introduce ourselves, she wanted to stay. Bless! The teachers are all 4-year trained and the centre is all based on the Reggio Emilia philosophy. I just wish she could have started at this place earlier and got a full year there before going to prep next year. Her old daycare was great but much more academic in its focus whereas I really love the 'engagement and empowerment' approach to learning that this centre focuses on.

So she will start next week and I start uni the following week. Still no placement for me but I have a subject to do and my thesis to write up so I'll be busy enough. Not to mention re-opening my shop which was going great guns before I had to close it. In many ways, doing my final placement over Christmas after I hand in my thesis would make life much easier.

But now I'm rambling. I should blog more often so I don't have so much catching up to do. :)

We are off to hand in kindy enrolment forms today then some girly shopping in the mall. Hopefully we will hear about a house and arrange for our stuff to arrive next week. And then I can start getting on with those new beginnings and get out of the yucky neutral zone, thank you William Bridges.