Since I started cooking a handful of years ago, making a big batch of curry and rice has become a minor tradition for me when I move somewhere new.

It implies I’ll be settling into a place long enough that it’s worth investing in the requisite equipment, spices, and fresh produce, but also that I’ll be around long enough to indulge in the bountiful leftovers that tend to result from my approach to such dishes.

I made some curry last night, so I guess that means I’m home.

I’ve made other acquisitions as part of my move-in process, beyond those directly curry-related.

I’m now the proud owner of a standing desk, a small bookcase, and a colossal, second-hand Instant Pot that the previous owner used once and then got rid of because it was too big for any of their cabinets (perfect for me and my huge-batch cooking style).

It’s been interesting sorting through my many “needs” and “wants” after having found a place to live, figuring out the dimensions of the space I’d be occupying, and then sorting out what actually makes sense to buy compared to what makes sense according to someone else’s priorities or needs (and what has been sold to me as something I would enjoy by clever marketers, but which wouldn’t actually be fulfilling after the initial burst of “I bought something, yay” pleasure chemicals).

Driving the stress that can sometimes emerge when we change locations, I think, is the desire to not just adjust our physical geographies, but to adjust ourselves: to build a more perfect space, within which a more perfect self can live and grow and flourish.

I absolutely feel this drive, and part of my justification for building a home base—a place from which to travel, but also to which I can return after traveling, which is a deviation from my typical way of doing things—is to see what it’s like to set up something more permanent for a while. To see if I might like having a little at-home recording space that’s optimized for the purpose, and to get a standing desk, a nice electric kettle, and a bookshelf upon which I can put things I actually intend to keep and use and appreciate over time.

The implicit lack of temporality is moderately stressful. It calls for a different mental stance than the one I would typically assume when moving into someone else’s space, or some kind of furnished, pre-templated situation.

I have the opportunity to build something that looks like me; and that’s tricky because I have a good sense of what I look like through the lens of what I carry, but little sense of what I look like translated into a two-bedroom apartment.

I’m currently finding some sense of equilibrium and balance by reminding myself that perfection is not something that can be achieved, so it’s okay if my space isn’t perfectly me, perfectly optimized for my purposes, or perfectly anything—it will not be, cannot be perfect, and that’s okay.

I’m also reminding myself that the concept of perfection is arguably more ideally and healthily thought of as a verb not an adjective. It’s a process, a journey, and it’s through the continued, conscious act of iteration that I’ll be most likely to not just make a space in which I feel comfortable and productive and fulfilled—and in which I can produce gargantuan quantities of curry—but in which I actually feel at home, rather than merely living in a set location where I receive mail and keep my Instant Pot.

—

If you found some value in this essay, consider supporting my work by buying me a coffee.