Contentment in the Compromise?

Or is it just exhaustion.

Is surrender good? Or surrender bad.

Giving up? Giving in.

I haven’t waved a white flag, more like a gray blue one. Or maybe I thought, hey. That flag would make a good sofa cover. I better reuse that. Linens are hard to come by here.

Compromise has always meant giving up to me. Maybe the old me. I guess now I’m the old me…the me from before. Younger me. Striver me. Never settle me.

In that (brainwashed empowered) mindset I have dumped houses, cars, lazy friends, clothing I don’t *LOVE* and more. Somedays I wonder. Should I have kept the house that was too big and too expensive? Should I have kept feeling bad every time I got a 5 minute rushed phone call in a car from one of those friends. You know the ones. They’re SO busy and SO rushed and always RIGHT in the middle of something but they’ll call you back on speaker whilst sitting in traffic if they remember or can fit you in because they keep 3243 friends besides you and all of us are apparently okay with the crumbs. That friend?

Admittedly it would have been nice a few times to have had a home to return to and a familiar voice to hear on the phone, but I don’t regret any of the losses. The minivan, yes. But that wasn’t my choice now was it. I notice that if you don’t drink alcohol you don’t get nostalgic for shit that sucked. Try it. I’m going on 7 years. Zero regrets. Alcohol? Many regrets.

Lately I hear myself saying, welp, that’s fine.

That’ll work for now.

Good enough.

I wonder if I’m just being lazy? Practical? Too old to give a shit? Too smart to think the grass is greener elsewhere?

A little of all of it.

Anyone who hasn’t tried to move as a grown up person into a rental in the last 5 years cannot comment. Anyone who has not tried to find something nice decent (not a double wide with a sagging subfloor) for less than $3000/month with “pet rent” and a $5000 deposit also has no opinion I’ll listen to with seriousness.

I had an actual American real estate agent tell me to look on Realtor dot com the other day for a rental (that’s where all the listings are!) and I secretly rolled my eyes and thought about a near and overdue future when they are obsolete like a VHS tape and we all scan our own QR code to get a key to a property and hire an AI closing attorney for $500 to handle the transfer of title in 12 minutes.

*My fantasy continues with all the mortgage brokers who bled us dry and all the dark arts bankers who pushed everyone over a cliff in 2008 who got a financial bailout instead of a prison sentence will soon see their property taxes go up 5000% and their insurance cancel because they have a Pomeranian, a known killer. Also the new rules from Black Rock/Vanguard AI terms of service (you read that right?) will say that if you park on the street, someone could hit your car so the car insurance will need to go through Lloyd’s of London for $2000/month for a 10 year old Honda. If you refuse you cannot own a car. Teslas, uninsurable. Even though you were forced to get an electric car they routinely blow up. Luckily Tesla has their own insurance company. (that part is true)

But wait, you say, I own my home! You own nothing if you’re paying taxes on the dirt it sits on and some insurance adjuster is telling you when and for how much you have to pay for a new weather proof roof for a hurricane that is not covered on your policy anyway. (Yes, I’ve bought and sold lots of real estate in Florida. Can you tell?) Mobile homes will be sold for $19 dollars because the lot rent is now $2500/month but includes free cable. (That part is true in a lot of states, like California and Florida) mobiles are also uninsurable, so tie down that roof!

It’s more exhausting than online dating. I haven’t done that since 2012, it looks pretty horrible these days. I’ve aged out of that. GenX cancelled ourselves for apathy.

But I’ve been getting Catfished by houses for years. Airbnbs that don’t exist, houses that photograph well that are literal rabbit warrens, fake listings on Zillow that are just weird voicemails that never have a way to see, or rent the houses posted—the Ponzi scheme of PAYING an application fee of $35-50 in a hot market likely makes Warren Buffet billions before he has his mayonnaise sandwich in Nebraska somewhere. (avg number of rental listings in US on Zillow is 14,000, so with each house taking in an average of $500 in application fees that’s $7,000,000 a day, add that to listing fees for agents and ad sales, their $3bil reported income is a little shy I think)

I listed a house for a friend in Tulsa once to weed out goons and had 100 applications in 2 days for a not great, pet friendly, garage conversion. IN OKLAHOMA. That’s when I knew we were in the soup.

So forgive me, dear reader, if I’ve thrown in my not quite white towel that I wash in a bucket because I don’t have laundry or access to a laundromat in this pueblo. I have an ugly roof over our heads and I can take a shower and the dogs are fine. Someone else said “you could help dogs anywhere” like there’s some sort of dog point system.

You know where there aren’t hundreds of dogs eating plastic bags because it had a tamale inside of it a few days ago? Great neighborhoods with bakeries that make crusty sourdough and serve “oat milk” that is foamed in a $12,000 Italian Espresso contraption coffee shops.

And I hate coffee culture and I make my own sourdough so what would I need a stray free neighborhood for?

Because where I live is kinda gross and I think I deserve better. Isn’t that what we’ve all been brainwashed into thinking? We deserve better? Corian counters and such (that are being banned because the dust they create during fabrication is killing the installers…yay)

So I’ve stopped looking not because I think I don’t deserve better but because I know better than to think I deserve anything. And it’s exhausting to keep turning over rocks. There may be that needle in the haystack but there may be mold in the ceiling or worse neighbors or maybe all the great restaurants are there to feed the wealthy cartel bosses and the town devolves into chaos after dark. I’ll never know until I’m there and at 57 with 10 rehabbed dogs and no transportation, just shy of millionaire club, I’m not delusional enough to imagine a world where that makes sense.

There’s 360 days of sun here, I’m growing some lettuces and herbs on a salvaged pallet of wood and I found an old table outside in the rubble to make my seashell mobiles. They have started carrying a pretty decent flan at the ice cream store. For today, Dec 29, that’s fine. It has to be.

You have to fit into a town, it rarely works the other way around. Like people, it’s best to accept them for what they currently offer, not wish you could change them.

I have enough to eat and feed 10-20 dogs a day and that feels good. Every time I open up a real estate app I get a knot in my gut. That doesn’t feel good.

That’s my only weather vane at the moment. And that’s okay.