Not Yet

Sorry, I'm not nesting yet. I am in the midst of preparing for an open studio so that also means cleaning the parts of my apartment that cannot be blocked off from view. I look around in dismay at the pretty much total lack of nesting even after 2 years of living here.
I moved from a place that I had invested much time and energy into making a nest for myself- colorful, quirky, cozy and warm. Okay- and stuffed to the rafters with charming stuff. But I was not able to financially sustain it, I lost the house, the garden, the studio and about 95% of my belongings. So, now I am in an apartment in an urban setting with a few shabby rooms and a workroom and a bunch of boxes of books still packed- no bookshelves; a few boxes of decorative items that I managed to bring with me- still packed; and a few sticks of furniture. I did a bit of painting when I first moved in and tried to set it up in a comfortable manner but then I ran out of steam. I have been puzzled by my lack of desire to fix the place up.
I was speaking with a wonderful and insightful friend last evening and she said something that illuminated my anhedonia for me. I had mentioned that I had done almost nothing to improve the apartment since I moved in and she had last seen it. She said she wasn't surprised. Well, I was surprised by her response. She explained that she had two other friends who had also lost everything in the past few years- through house fires- and neither of them showed any desire to nest again either.
My desire to acquire anything beyond necessities for the apartment is low to non-existent, my desire to even browse is low. I used to be an agreeable browser- I could browse flea-markets or shops with no impulse or compulsion to buy, just filling my eyes with visual candy was enough, thank you. I used to love to read shelter magazines- especially UK Country Living. Not now. I picked up a copy recently to see if that would spark something- decorating porn to revive a dormant home-libido. Nah, nada, zip, zero, zilch.
Now I recognize that my thought process is: why buy things or invest in a place that may be gone in the wink of an eye? Why potentially put myself through all that again? I have moved on but only enough to get just out of sight of the past. I have stopped and am stuck around the corner from the disaster, unable though to keep walking forward. But my life is not all stagnation and resignation. I have moved forward in other, less material aspects of my life- and for that I am very grateful.
So, perhaps there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon; perhaps that will be enough to get me to move my feet a few inches away from this stuck corner; perhaps I will start to dream again- perhaps of a garden, perhaps of a kitchen...