It has been a couple week since I have been able to submit an article, and in the process I have learned a valuable lesson that I would like to pass on to my readers. Those that know me know that I moved to Kingsport, Tennessee in January. In an effort to keep my costs down, I decided to sublet a room in a trailer for a very reasonable rate. The lady that I had moved in with seemed to like a nice lady and everything seemed to be good to go with this new living situation. It was after this point that everything took a turn for the worse.

After four months living in that trailer, I got some rather stunning news. I was told that there had been an issue between the lady I was living with and the landlord and that as a result, she had been evicted which meant that I would have to find a new place to live. Over the next couple weeks, I met with the landlady and found that the rent that I had been paying had not been making its way to her. Understandably upset, she had no choice but to evict my roommate and to work toward getting a tenant in the trailer that would get her paid for her property. The conversation with the landlady taught me a valuable lesson, which I will get to in a moment after I finish this story.

Left with the unexpected need to come up with deposits and work my way into a new place to live, I had to scramble to figure out how to make everything work. Faced with the prospect of becoming just another addition to the number of homeless people in the nation, I started talking to some of the organizations in the area to see if there was anyone that could offer any assistance. Literally within hours of having to meet the deadline for moving out of the trailer I had been living in, Family Promise of Greater Kingsport came through in a huge way and got me into an apartment. A faith-based organization, Family Promise helps so many people in the local area avoid the specter of having to sleep on the streets and wonder where their next meals will come from. With all they have done, I would like to personally thank them for everything that they do for the community.

Earlier, I mentioned a valuable lesson that had been learned through my situation. The lesson seems so basic now but was something I never even considered before all this happened. If you are going to make the decision to sublet a room, make sure to talk to the landlord and get it in writing that they approve of you moving in. The landlady at my previous location had prohibited my roommate from subletting previously and had I known that, I could have saved myself a lot of grief. That one extra step, insisting to meet the landlord, could have saved me so much stress and several hundred dollars that was incurred in having to move unexpectedly, not to mention that security deposit on the room that I of course never got back. So, there it is, the story of why I have been absent the past couple weeks and the lesson learned from my experience. If even one person reads this and avoids the mistakes I made, then this will have been a good experience instead of an embarrassing one.