7 Lessons From a Really Hard Week

Reactions to and thoughts on life’s unexpected mega-challenges.

On January 1, 2023, I walked into my apartment to find the ceiling open and falling apart in places, the baseboards ripped off the walls, and trash cans staged around the living room with dirty ceiling water stagnating inside them.

“Are you fucking serious?!” I yelled into the din of eight industrial air blowers running on their highest settings. The air smelled like damp drywall and impending mold. The ceilings, walls, and floors in every room of the small apartment were either still wet or showing signs of severe water damage.

As it turns out, while my partner and I had been traveling for a week over the holidays, a pipe had burst on the floor over our unit, flooding the level above us and overflowing into ours via the ceiling and walls.

Then, about a day later, another pipe did the same thing.

Our home looked like a disaster area. Our property managers did not prepare us for what we were walking into.

I had spent a good chunk of 2022 telling myself that 2023 would be better — a fresh start. New beginnings and all that.

Instead, I came back to a home I couldn’t live in with a laundry list of problems (including lots of actual…