As you might have read recently, my family is looking for a new home and while not in a rush, it is also good not to be caught on the heels when things need to happen. Tonight we went and looked at a house that we considered would be suitable in many ways, and it was. The only problem is that since we talked to our bank manager today also, it is 100,000 euros on the wrong side of our maximum budget.
My daughter cried when we left the house. She doesn't cry often in public.
It was weird.
This might actually be a god thing for us, well, of course it is. The smaller the debt the better as it leaves less exposure to risk and a lower liability per month to cover. I would prefer to live in the imperfect for at least a time, rather than have a "dream" home that we can't afford. It wasn't that dreamy, but it would have been cute for us. So, we are looking at other options, which we would have done anyway.
While potentially a failure, I think that what else might be better is that rather than buying someone else's design tastes and paying for their mistakes and sentiment, we could get away with something significantly cheaper and do it up ourselves when we have the funds. That normally means - never.
I think there is often a strong "I will do it when I have the time or money" attitude around houses, but once settled in, there is the tendency to become blind to the unfinished projects and missing skirting board here and there. However, if buying someone else's unfinished or shoddy work, they are much more obvious and can be a tiny little aneurysm every time one walks past.
For example, the seam of the tiles in our current toilet not aligning, even though though the tiles are the same size... "professionals."
Buuuut, will I ever have the time or money to fulfill the completion of a home?
I really hope so, because that'll mean Steem is hitting its marks economically, meaning it is performing socially too. I know many think it is all DED, but I do not. And while I might not be able to get a "large enough" loan under current circumstances, those conditions can change very fast in crypto. I remember when for a short period of time my account was worth over 100K and I only had 20% of the Steem I have now. It will get there again, it might just take longer than people hope.
However, let's say it will take two years from the time we move into a new place that is a bit of a fixer-upper, that would give us the time under our belts to learn the place, accept its quirks and then make good decisions about how we could renovate it to fit our lives. As 
I agree. Lifestyle is something that my family has been lacking as most of our time, energy and money has gone toward surviving, not thriving. I think that we are due for a bit of "thrive mode" and I consider all of the effort put into Steem as working toward that end. Thriving for us means having a little more freedom in what we do each day and I believe that creating the mental space will be aided by a change in the physical. While it might sound strange, most of the time we have lived in this apartment is connected to intense struggle of some kind or another, and I think it might be like getting very ill on cheap bourbon and not being able to drink it later in life. A physical change might be what is required for us all.
I once read that planning a holiday can be almost as beneficial as actually going on holiday, and I do feel that going through the processes of organizing finances and looking for a new home to have a rejuvenating effect on my mind. And of course, this will likely influence my writing also, as I fill my thoughts with thoughts that I haven't had to consider much of and that has a knock-on effect to create new thoughts.
Psychologically "getting out and about" is definitely aided by actually, getting out and about. Hobbies, travel, new acquaintances or simply taking a walk in the forest are catalysts for the mind, new stimuli to fire neurons. And at the moment, I am pretty charged, even if we can't get what we want, where we want, with the features we want. It doesn't really matter because, all of them are just houses - and from any one of them, I can make a home.
Home is where the heart is, and it is good to have a healthy heart. I might pull up short financially, but my heart is beating fine.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
