Travis has left the building

I moved into apartment 1911 at 10601 Six Pines Drive in April of 2013. This was after living with my brother and his wife for a couple of years. I had lived with them for a stretch a few years prior, had an apartment, then moved in with them to save money for a potential move to California.
My mother was also in the last few years of her life and if I had saved up enough money to move to California, I most likely could not have left her behind as deep down I knew she didn’t have much longer with us. Thus I never moved to California. I don’t regret for a minute that I didn’t move when she was alive. While I think I made a great effort to see her as much as I could, I often feel like I didn’t. If I had moved off, I definitely would have felt guilty the rest of my life.  I can honestly look inside myself and know that I tried to do what was right by her. 

At the same time of moving into 1911, I left a job I really hated and went back to one I had left a year before and had thought I hated. A couple of things I learned/confirmed. Making less money doesn’t necessarily make you happier, and sometimes you get away from something you don’t like and figure out it wasn’t that bad after all. When I went back to the old job, not a lot bothered me like it did before I left. 

When I moved in, I  think the name of the complex was ‘The Parkside’. It’s changed names and management over the last ten years several times. The current name is ‘The Biltmore’ although I don’t think anyone who has been to the Biltmore Estate is going to confuse my 574 square foot living space for anything remotely close to living in luxury.

The location has been great, during my time in The Woodlands, I’ve been to around 30 shows at the Woodlands Pavilion which is .75 miles down the street from my apartment. I could ride my bike down there, and be home in bed before people who were at the same show made it out of The Woodlands. Going to shows at the pavilion were often therapeutic. While I fully understood my failure to read signals from women, there was one I kept chasing after that I finally figured out wasn’t a connection. However, I was having a hard time moving on. Sitting on the lawn at the Pavilion during an Aerosmith show, something just clicked, and I moved on. 

After Mom passed, my Dad moved away from this area, and a few years later my brother moved. Aunt Pat is/was still close by and although we didn’t visit a lot, we did have some dinners together and she came to my rescue several times when I had car troubles.  I’m thankful for her and the kindness she has shown me.  

By now you’ve  figured out the conclusion to this. A lot of things have changed over the last few years, and now it is time for me to make a change. By the end of the month I will be moved out of 1911 and on to Smithville, Texas. My brother is out there. Maybe we’ll be like Robert Duvall and Michael Caine in Secondhand Lions. Be the two mysterious brothers everyone wonders where they came from.  Perhaps we’ll find and hide a fortune  in a secret room under the barn just like the movie. 

It’s not like I am moving to another country, I’ll get back over here on occasion. Maybe to check in on Ward at my home away from home. He gets to Twin Peaks every morning at 11 AM, 7 days and stays there for a few hours taking a break from caring for his mom with Alzheimer’s. He and his Dad take turns watching after her. I’ve made a few other friends there, including some of the girls that work there. It was kind of hard to break the news to some of them. Not often you get a broken heart on your receipt.

A lot of the workers at Sonic know me by name too. Over the last week or so I’ve started telling them about the move. I didn’t want to be presumptuous and think they would care, but I also didn’t want them to wonder what happened when I all of the sudden stopped going there several times a week. Change is always hard, even if it’s a good change. I have lived in this apartment longer than I have lived anywhere in my life. 

The apartment is nothing special, a small living room, not so spacious kitchen and dining area.  It does have a  great view of the pool, and I’ve spent a lot of time in it. Although at the new place I will have even better pool access, it will be right outside my door. 

Since I can’t write anything without quoting a song lyric of some sort, here is one from the Avett Brothers song, November Blue:
And I don’t know why I have to, but this man must move on

I loved my time here, didn’t know ’till I was gone”

I leave here with one question, should I tell the neighbor that’s been calling me ‘Travis’ for the last three years, that my name is not Travis, or just leave a sign on my door that says ‘Travis has left the building’?