I’ve spent the last few days moving all of my stuff into a new apartment I’m going to be sharing with my friend D. We came up with the idea about a month ago, when D said she wanted to find a place in my neighborhood. I was dying to get out of my tiny shoebox of a studio and figured teaming up with someone would mean we could find a better, larger place. Telling her the idea surprised even myself, because I have lived alone for the past five years and have often said there was no way I could go back to living with a roommate. Now I was proposing the idea and D agreed it could work.

Before I knew it we had found a nice new place, near my current apartment and just as close to the beach. It’s bright, has two bathrooms (a crucial detail) and two balconies. I’ve already fantasized about sitting out there with my laptop typing away instead of in my room or some distraction-packed café. I have another week before I move out of my current cave, but D has already started moving in and the place is full of really nice furniture and a lot of candles. I have never had a female roommate before and I can already tell it was a smart move as women just have a way of making everything nicer. Even if two guys are fairly neat, the place probably will lack the warmth and home-ness of a woman’s place. This is already proving to be true. (And let’s face it, when guys live together the place usually has the charm of a frat house).

My only worry is how the new apartment and a roommate will affect my work. I’m just not used to anyone bothering me during the day, and I can just see her asking me if I want to “grab some lunch” or “come see this hilarious thing on TV” when I’m in the middle of writing. Once I give in to the temptation of “hanging out” during a weekday I think I could be doomed. She’s a freelancer like me and I just hope she is VERY busy. And I guess I’ll have to set some boundaries early on so she knows that living with a writer is not like living with other people. Her last roommate was a semi-famous actress who was gone for months at a time and lived the “fabulous” life when she was in town. I couldn’t be more opposite (I’m home for months at a time and there is very little that is “fabulous” about my life at this point).

And then there’s just the challenge of living with someone, period. Forget about the work. I’ll be lucky if I remember to put on pants on the way from my bedroom to the bathroom. There will be those awkward times when one of us has a “friend” over for the night. Moments when one of us eats the other’s food by accident or doesn’t wash their dishes or take out the trash or pass on some important phone message. There will be morning chit-chat, evenings watching TV, occasional dinners. I’m not saying this stuff is bad, by any stretch. In fact, it’ll be good for me after living the solo life for so long. It will just take some… adjustments.

I’m looking forward to it. Kinda.