Reactionary

I’m starting to lose hope that what I’m looking for in this city just does not exist. I am a realist and I know what I’m really looking for starts at about $350,000 which is much too much for one person on my pay to afford. The perfect place is a condo in an older building, like a converted Federalist house, with two bedrooms, a new kitchen, and some outdoor space, in a good neighborhood. I know I can’t afford that so I’m looking for something I can live with. That doesn’t seem to exist either.

Nothing is listed at the right price. Things are either really crappy and overpriced, that’s why they’re still sitting on the market or they’re nice but once again overpriced for what they are so they’re not showing up on my searches because they’re too expensive and yet they’re not selling because they’re too expensive for what they are. I’m starting to feel this will never happen. Once September comes, I’m in danger of bumping up against the lease again. I have to renew by the last day of September. I’m losing hope and I just can’t keep up this pace anymore, all this stress and worry and constant hawking over so many hundreds of details. I’m going to get sick. It needs to be over.

I need to buy a place or decide to never buy and move on with my life as a permanent renter. Interest rates have destroyed my buying power and they’re on their way up again sooner rather than later since the Fed will have to move them up to combat inflation, which is at a whopping 5.6%. I suspect those of you who tell me not to worry etc etc etc are clearly misinformed. Ignorance masquerades as hope far too often. Read the writing on the wall. This market meltdown hasn’t hit the wall yet.

Kiplinger’s has the clearest, best article on the mess that I’ve read as yet. Stop wasting your money. Stop driving. Being short on cash is tough enough now but it’s a disaster when you really, really need it such as when you’re old or sick or laid off.

I really don’t know what it’s like to be an optimist. Many of my friends are and it’s a wonder to me. I’m not a pessimist either. Optimists and pessimists are actually two of the same kind. They’re mirror images of each other. One makes nonsensical good of a bad situation and the other makes equally nonsensical bad of a good situation. They’re both delusional.

I’m a contingency planner. I plan for all eventualities and scenarios and x-factors and the unforeseen. It’s a tiring thing to be but this is why so little goes wrong. This is why I’m 100% debt-free and I don’t get lost and I’m never caught at unawares. The bad thing is once you’re used to thnking that way it’s hard to get out of it. I realise you don’t have to be that way over every little thing, yet it’s hard to stop. Some of it has to be just the nature of someone to be that way and some of it has to be a learned response (nature vs. nurture for the psychologists out there). I can’t dissect or diagnose my personality, but I know it’s always been a way for me to plan for what my useless family never thought of. They’re always caught up in stupid things like ease of execution or personal gain. I guess that’s how most people think. In some ways I hate them for it because it was always too much fo a burden for a kid to have. In some ways I’m glad I think the way I do even though it’s set me up for near-constant frustration at humanity.

I have to go mock up a web interface for the homepage of the department’s website at work. The people who are in charge of it now have no idea how to design for the web and the organization and cascading heirarchies that need to happen so a site works. I think I’ll get forced to be the editor-in-chief of the new resource guide for one of the surgical services. There goes that contingency planning again.

Posted on August 16th, 2008 under General, Life, Rant •  Print •  Email • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback