Living Alone For 2 Weeks (27 September, 2025)

The past 2 weeks I have been at my job following its detailed and lengthy induction and I am excited for whats to come in my career! However today I won’t be talking about my career but mostly about how it is has been living alone for the first time in my life.

During university I stayed at home since campus was nearby so I had no viable reason to live in a dorm or anything. Many people my age during uni would live at the dorms so they had many years of experience living alone and having the environment that makes one have to be self-sufficient with no family to help with the basic necessities like groceries and laundry. Now it is my turn to live alone for my job but it certainly feels rather out of place to do this years later than one normally would. It certainly makes me feel like a late bloomer.

Personally, I always feel a little inferior when it comes to these situations even if whatever the subject is would be deemed trivial and doesn’t factor in the feeling of being inferior or just right. Living alone isn’t some rite of passage of life! You just do what you gotta do hehe. However, instead of talking about that, I want to talk about how I have been dealing with living alone far away from home 2 weeks ago and how I am managing today.

To begin with, it was hard, very hard! It is soooooo different and scary doing everything on my own because honestly it showed that I know nothing despite having family show me the ropes at home with laundry, cooking and managing groceries. I absolutely took it all for granted even when I was preparing myself for this move for a long time. I even learned a lot of things such as cooking to just help myself and not fall for buying fast food since that would be quite expensive and I don’t wanna fall for that trap so soon! Buying groceries is really different when alone because now I have to manage a budget for that and it gets intense when you obsess with numbers and being so concerned with saving. It has left me on edge as if a Tonberry is slowly inching towards me. I struggle to even articulate my thoughts regarding how I first was when I moved here, it has been so chaotic and mentally a mess!

This time I couldn’t rely on my family to wake me up if I was late, nor have morning tea or have anyone to talk to or say bye to. I have to come home and sort my own food instead of having one prepare and make for me out of kindness and doing it all yourself eats up time which hurts when you finish at 5. It gets worse when you fall asleep after work for an hour or two so your evening is just used up by sleeping when that is what the night is for. I am definitely unfit but I am trying! I am trying to change up my sleep schedule where now I stop sleeping at 3am but now before midnight (or at least try) so yeah, its all about breaking bad habits. A way to motivate myself is “I’m getting paid for it”. Trust me, it works every time.

When I go to buy groceries or any items, I keep the receipts and log them down on a spreadsheet to see my spending as I want to measure how much money I consume in the first few months which I hope helps me gauge my habits and just see out of curiosity if the amount I’m spending is too little, too much or normal. It will certainly make sense in a few months when you compare how much you get paid, pay on bills and groceries and then luxuries. I will certainly update this blog with a result when the time comes.

It certainly gets lonely after a few days when it all just hits. I have been quite homesick but I have to persevere. I usually enjoy my own company but this time I really want to go out and talk to many people and just enjoy each other. It is a nice fantasy for me to have whilst I don’t know anyone in town. However, my best and most cherished friends are those that I met randomly, not planned so I’m hopeful for the future!

The past two weeks have been insane to get by but thankfully nearly every day of induction I met new people to talk to and it made me feel very comfy to be in this new place. Some even hailed from where I was from so there is a comforting familiarity and almost everyone has moved from one place to another so I’m not alone. I imagine everyone else has a better idea of how to take care of themselves but hopefully I’ve not been lagging behind too much now. I have been picking up the skills rather quickly I think.

Over the days I’ve been trying to optimize my living situation by trying to accurately buy the right amount of what I need before it spoils and slotting in the right time to shop or do tasks so I have more time for myself and my hobbies whilst getting everything done to standard. I do miss home a lot but I think I’m doing a good job holding the fort here now.

Sleep is always a struggle. Even though I mentioned that my sleep has gotten better, it is a daily struggle to really set a proper pattern. My sleep isn’t as bad as I make it out to be, usually no matter time I sleep I usually consistently wake at 9am. That isn’t ideal when employed however but now I am waking at 6:15AM. The challenge is to prioritise many hours of sleep whilst doing your daily tasks and hobbies and not cutting hours at night to achieve them. The typical routine so far has been to come home from work, nap (bad habit), wake up and be sluggish doing my hobbies very slowly until I fall asleep for the night. The hobbies include working on this site but realistically I write a few words then zone out due to lack of focus from sleep disruption and not having myself settle down properly. The key is to not nap after work so I actually get something done hehe, but to feel so tired when work has only been very tame so far does say something about my health that I need to improve on.

Eventually, the two week induction was over and the first official day of work was really nice. It opened with an icebreaker (we have had more than 5 during induction) and I was told to bring an item in to help describe myself. I naturally forgot but I didn’t have anything anyways since my goods are still back home. Nonetheless, my icebreaker entry was quite grand. I described some personal things and we all had a laugh especially when I mentioned photography. I described my black and white album and the example I gave was the pigeons as you might have seen in my “Black & White” album but I said “they were, romancing each other” and everyone thought it was so funny because who would have saw that coming! I didn’t realise it sounded more than kissing but it was funny, especially since I didn’t even realise the big big boss was in the room. A lovely impression I gave.

I did show the photo around and they were impressed nonetheless. It has been a good time to make up for the struggles of being alone and living alone. Everyone is so kind and I can have a laugh with my fellow coworkers every day! There is always a new set of chaos every day to have fun in whilst we get the work done.

This blog is rather a more personal one but I feel its a nice chance to write about something recently since this is all quite a new experience to me!