Oh hey internet. Sorry it’s been a few weeks. I’ve been busy. With what? Uhh I don’t know just busy. Look I don’t have to answer to you—ouch, you’re hurting me, please let go, internet, I’m sorry ok? I’m sorry, you’re hurting me, ouch!

That was kind of offensive to people in abusive relationships. So I’m sorry. Not sorry enough to press the “Backspace” key though.

ANYWAY. The reason I’m here today is because I’m moving, and I want to talk a little bit about it: it sucks.

That’s not totally true. Its good and bad at the same time, decided entirely by the contexts of the move, where you are coming from and where you are going. Generally, I’m pretty excited to move. Here are the top reasons why:

5. I generally don’t like where I live.

This one is pretty self-explanatory, but I’ll explain it more, otherwise what’s the point of having this blog, really? I live in Bushwick, a neighborhood of Brooklyn located right next to Williamsburg. Hipsters have been moving to Bushwick for a few years now, but I unfortunately live in the ugliest and dirtiest part of this neighborhood. Where some parts of Bushwick are old factories that have been converted into super-cool lofts, or organic pizza restaurants, my part of Bushwick has about a million bodegas and a rat problem.

On top of this I don’t really like the house I live in. I live in a three-story two-family style row-house with seven other people (we’ll get there next). This is not a brownstone. It is a row house with vinyl siding that is not pleasant on the eyes. It’s an ugly house in a row of ugly, dilapidated houses in a neighborhood of ugly, dilapidated buildings. There isn’t enough room in the house for how many people current live there, so in what should be a supply closet with a door leading into my room, lives another person. To reiterate, a person lives in a 5ftx8ft closet that has a door leading into my room. This offers virtually no privacy for me or this other person. Another person lives in what used to be our living room. Two housemates were dating and sharing a room, and after breaking up, the house decided it was cool for one of them to just take over the living room instead. Did I mention I was living in a cooperative house where all decisions were made by consensus?

4. I lived in a cooperative.

If you look to the upper-right hand corner of the screen you’ll notice that is says “Half-Comedy. Half-Political.” Up to this point its pretty much been all comedy (or none if you don’t think I’m funny) and no politics. But it should be known that I’m pretty radically left. So to me, living in an intentional living cooperative sounded pretty cool. We wouldn’t just be distant roommates, but try to create a culture where we live and blah blah blah, cue the Indigenous drum music and break out the incense. Or in my case, seeing as they were this weird hippie-hipster crossbreed, cue the ear-drum-piercing dubstep-rave music and and break out the molly.

Either way, what I at first saw as the hope of a great alternative living situation, quickly turned into another notch in my “bad-living-arrangements” belt. They had dogs that would periodically shit on the floor. They constantly ate food that did not belong to them (and coincidentally belonged to me). They smoked cigarettes and weed in common areas, talked a lot about cooperation, but frequently looked for extremely individualistic solutions to problems. It was hypocritical, and I couldn’t be a part of it. The problem was not really that I lived in a co-op, but that I wanted to live in a co-op but instead lived in a shitty house in Bushwick with hipsters.

I don’t want people to get me wrong. For the most part I did like these people personally (for the most part), but that does not mean I should have lived with them. I should have maybe smoked pot with them once in a while. But living with them was a mistake.

3. It was far away from friends

New York City has the best public transit system in the entire world. That’s some opinion, but also some fact. There are a lot of issues with service and people like to complain about late subways incessantly (myself included), but generally, if you have $2.25, the MTA will get you where you need to go anywhere in the city of New York.

That being said, if you live in Bushwick, off the J train, don’t expect to be able to get anywhere besides the Lower East Side with any inkling of convenience. None of my friends lived near me, I don’t like hipsters, and most of my closest friends had no desire to come to Brooklyn. There was no reason to spend time in Brooklyn, and yet, it was so hard to get other places. Maybe my friends could have been better at trying to see if they liked Brooklyn, but we all came from places Uptown, and I didn’t care enough to try to figure Brooklyn out myself. This was ultimately one of the deciding factors in my decision to move because it shouldn’t take an hour and three subways to get to a friends apartment within the city limits. Are there still city limits?

2. It was far away from work.

Again: New York City has a great public transportation system, blah blah blah….the MTA will get you where you need to go, etc.

I work in the Bronx, which is far away from Brooklyn. Like 90-minutes-by-subway far. So I’ve spending about fifteen hours a week just traveling to and from work. At first it was ok. I was listening to new music. I had started reading Moby Dick (Spoiler: They all die in the end). I read the daily free papers, amNewYork and Metro. I occupied my time properly, 99% of it at least (nailed it!). Then all these things got boring. I had listened to all four of the Felice Brothers albums till I began to hate their awesome indie-folky sound (seriously though, that’s impossible).

I began listening to podcasts a few months ago instead, which was great. Podcasts ranged from 40-90 minutes so I could listen to anywhere between two and five in a single day depending on which ones I was listening to. But I am reaching a point now that scientists often refer to as “Peak-Podcast.” This phenomenon is a lot like “Peak-Oil.” Pretty soon I will know way too much about Marc Maron’s personal life and will have heard every single person that does a podcast on ever other person’s podcast promoting their own podcast that I will podcast a podcast podcast. Podcast. Seriously though check out my podcast at thesockpartypodcast.podbean.com. It’s a real thing.

1. I wanted to.

I can get a little stir crazy sometimes, and if I don’t like something or someone I’m known to just burn bridges. At some point I decided I didn’t want to live there so I made plans to move.

I don’t really know how to end this blog. I wanna make a big funny joke but I feel like I shot my wad on the podcast plug joke. Ok, I guess I’ll just see you later internet….So can you unlock the door please? Internet? Can you please let me out of the basement? I think the door’s stuck. Can anybody hear me? Is that a dead body down here?