A suburban slumber
On the reality of homeownership. On the creativity that suffers. On reflections that sound like regrets but aren't regrets. On retro-wisdom.
Homeownership Realness
We bought a house. Everyone told us it’ll be a lot of work. That it takes so much time. Fills your weekends. And all that.
And all of it turned out to be true.
I’m finding myself preoccupied with weeding, painting, drilling, buying shit online, buying shit in person, arguing with contractors, researching contractors that I hope to argue with less, posting ridiculous questions on Next Door in the hope that strangers can help me crowdsource answers to things like “why does my central air system seem to smell like mice?”, leading me to a google rabbit hole for how to vet whether a cat will be a mouse-killer. And so on. You get the picture. One thing leads to another. And then that other thing leads to another. On loop. Seemingly forever.
The totally scientific, statistical correlation
And so I wonder if the fact that more and more people have side hustles, creative projects, and a general hunger to do more and be more is spurred by the fact that less and less people are becoming homeowners. Could it be that a decline in homeownership is inadvertently fueling a creativity boom?
Given young adult homeownership dropped 10% since 1960s, could the life of a renter be giving people more space and time to go after creative pursuits, side hustles, adventures? Especially in the outrageous property markets such as NYC or SF - could the energetic and cognitive savings be getting funneled into spending time on building other forms of capital? Volunteering, thinking big thoughts, trying new things, cultivating communities… Could the silver lining in the shitty deal our generation is getting (high property prices, high interest rates, high cost of living, student debt and compensation that didn’t grow in correlation to all of that) lay in the unprecedented inventiveness and entrepreneurialism?
If I’m living in a rented apartment, I don’t have to obsess over what sconces to buy out of the bazillion sconces available across a gazillion lightning e-commerce sites. If I’m renting, I do not have to worry when that sconce stops working. I simply call the landlord / super / property manager and within 24 hours the problem is solved. And I’ve paid $0 to solve it. Or frankly $0 to buy the sconce because it was there when I moved in. If I’m renting, I’m saving money, time, and then some more money, and some more time.
Homes - on the flip side - are voids of projects, chores, shit to buy, people to hire. And everything is my goddamn responsibility. And it’s really boosting the L in my P&L.
Je ne regrette rien
Don’t get me wrong - this is not a “I want my old life back” kind of whine.
I’m simply waking up to the reality of homeownership, which - like with renovations - no one seemed to bring to life explicitly enough for my taste. At least not when I was asking around.
Possibly, I’m also waking up to the fact that I only ever learn from first-hand experiences that I needed to first-hand experience.
Non, je ne regrette rien. Life is more interesting that way.
I’ve been pondering… would I have pursued even half of the side projects I’ve pursued over the years, if I were a younger homeowner? Would I have reached across the continent and across the ocean to build a global community? Would I have found the spaciousness to go the extra mile? Would I have spent nights and weekends on projects that didn’t involve either flora or fauna?
The most honest (and sad) answer is… probably not.
The odd satisfaction in the ordinary
There’s a weird kind of delight in torching weeds into oblivion. There’s meditation in sanding a plank of plywood. There’s peace in painting. There’s creativity in dealing with contractors, who almost always default to “well, it just can’t be done”. And plenty of satisfaction in proving them wrong. Again and again. There’s true adventure waiting at a stone warehouse.
And then at the end of the day, there’s pleasure in feeling settled and anchored. To the point where some mornings, waking up looking at all the trees outside my window I feel as though I never ever want to get up. So anchored. So settled. I don’t want to move an inch. Which for an immigrant like me is a stunning, new state. I am coming to terms with the physical sensation of being bolted to a place.
Also very bolted to the mortgage. Engaging in the daily manifestation practice to encourage the universe (i.e. FED) to lower interest rates. But that’s for another essay.
A passing thought I had about all of this while sitting on my commuter train from Grand Central, is that I wish I had known what I now know during my renter years in NYC.
I wish I had the sensibility to recognize ever so more deeply the singularity of that time. Not in the sense of “I would have done things very differently”. Because I wouldn’t. Because I did enough. Actually, more like so. freaking. much. But in the sense that I wish I possessed the ability to more fully be with what is, as it is. Yatha-bhuta as Buddha would say. Where the moment I’m occupying is also the moment I’m fully, entirely, exhaustively, vicariously living through. I wish I could always bring with me that crisp present-moment awareness. And the appreciation that comes with it.
I wish that, all along the years I dreamed of moving out into nature while pursuing all sorts of interesting, creative ventures - in the spaciousness of not having to worry about when should the next propane gas delivery come - I had a deeper knowing of how beautiful and perfect all the present-moment unfolding was.
Guess what I’m trying to practice right now, eh?
The Practice
I’m spending time reflecting on all the things that are new in my “obligation” or “chore” bucket and trying to see how incredible, wonderful, and life-giving they actually are. Try it. Let me know how it went - you can drop me a note in response to this email simply. Here for it all.
Random collection of things
🤨 Great question to ask yourself (and others) from time to time: “And how is that working out for you?” in a longer essay by Oliver Burkeman.
🤓 Fun fact: The word “multitask” was invented by IBM in 1965 to describe a computer capability. It was only later that we started using it for humans.
💪🦾
, as always, super spot on about the collective moment we’re living through…An excerpt I particularly loved to get you to go and read it: “(…) if it feels like re-entrenchment or a digging-in or a psychotic split of the collective psyche, that’s because it is. Anyone who’s done any kind of work on themselves knows right before the breakthrough, your five-year-old self comes in with a chainsaw—anytime I’ve ever been on the cusp of growth is also when I’ve been known to do my most classically infantile work. If we think about ourselves like this — as one unit, a collective — we can imagine there’s a part of us reaching new levels of development, ready to step into the next stage of our growth, and there’s a part of us that’s totally freaking out about it, acting out in the face of pending obliteration, screaming as loud as it possibly can and texting every ex-boyfriend at 3am. It wants nothing but to sabotage what it sees as its impending death.”
👀 New substack I discovered this week by
, pairs very well with Holly’s wonderful essay above. Made me think about how I parent. How I am probably not helping my kids prepare for the “oh fuck” moment when their egos will inevitably start to deconstruct (somewhere at the quarter- or mid-life crisis…) How I am making them believe they are in fact the center of the universe. My universe. They have no idea my universe isn’t everyone’s universe.🤯 Best thing I watched on the internet this week. It’s old so you’ll think I live under a rock. Still… Thought provoking in a way that I haven’t been provoked in a long time: Max Tegmark on Lex Fridman Podcast.