2019 I have dubbed "The Year of the Precipice."
I feel like we are on the edge of things. I feel like we are climbing to the top ready to make some plunges. Andy and I are looking at where our goals and our finances are, trying to find where they can overlap or at least can be started toward something. There are lots of hypothetical situations, points were where talk about best case scenarios, and elements of how do we leave a cushion for worst case scenarios, all in the same stretch.
The big one is that we're trying to sort out whether or when we'd like to buy a house. Andy wants the autonomy of knowing that he can do what he wants to with his space, that he can plant a garden or paint a wall without seeking permission and otherwise carve out a spot that is uniquely his. I want autonomy by maintaining the freedom to leave when our lease is up and in the security that someone will be coming by to fix things that eventually break, without the sudden financial shock disrupting other plans. Same need; different strategies; lots of discussion.
Somewhere along the way, we figured out that we could actually discuss elements of it if we sidelined some of the emotional elements temporarily. On my part, Andy throwing Zillow links at me with "what do you think of this one?" was pushing too hard too fast and thus was shut down immediately, frustrating Andy who wanted to get an idea of what we might want to do. This fits our respective approaches--Andy has to try things out to understand what he wants; I'm better at identifying what traits and factors I'm looking for in an item to find one that matches those parameters. So, we shifted the house discussion from "what do you like about this option?" to "what would you want in a house?" which was a much safer conversation for me and helps Andy hone down his focus, including creating an EPIC spreadsheet to quantify and compare those elements.
But we've got my student debt to figure in. And we're finally to a point in our snowballing where we're ready to attack this one head-on. I don't want to add another debt in when we're actually close to being out of it. It's tangible now: if we knuckle down, we can be done with my student debt in a year in a half. Eighteen months. How much broader my world will seem for it. So, yes, the housing argument sits against that, too, where I'm not keen to take on an albatross I don't have to, no matter how lovely its feathers are.
So here's where that leaves us, then: we're in a state of preparing, of chipping away that debt in extra hundred dollar payments at a time, of assessing both what we want and what we need, of determining what the right balance between want and need we should land on, of obsessively checking our accounts and reconfiguring the budget anywhere we can give ourselves more space (mostly me); of feeling both close and impossibly far from our goals.
Last year left us with some very major shifts.
There's just so much coming, clouds rolling ominously on the horizon. But, I love a good thunderstorm. I often express my anxiety by preparing to the point of preoccupation (yay for high functioning depression), and yet facing into 2019, I feel oddly reassured that I have placed safety nets where I needed to, exercised caution liberally, but still placed a lot of the pieces in the right positions. There's a number of places that need to be shifted into the right place to initiate the chain reaction, but we're still building to a summit of some as-of-yet intangible shift. Changes are coming. I cannot speak to how hard or easy that will make 2020, but 2019 is building toward them. I find myself looking toward the edge of the cliff--still a little ways off, but visible--and wondering what the view is going to look like by the end of the year.
Wishing you all the best 2019.
The big one is that we're trying to sort out whether or when we'd like to buy a house. Andy wants the autonomy of knowing that he can do what he wants to with his space, that he can plant a garden or paint a wall without seeking permission and otherwise carve out a spot that is uniquely his. I want autonomy by maintaining the freedom to leave when our lease is up and in the security that someone will be coming by to fix things that eventually break, without the sudden financial shock disrupting other plans. Same need; different strategies; lots of discussion.
Somewhere along the way, we figured out that we could actually discuss elements of it if we sidelined some of the emotional elements temporarily. On my part, Andy throwing Zillow links at me with "what do you think of this one?" was pushing too hard too fast and thus was shut down immediately, frustrating Andy who wanted to get an idea of what we might want to do. This fits our respective approaches--Andy has to try things out to understand what he wants; I'm better at identifying what traits and factors I'm looking for in an item to find one that matches those parameters. So, we shifted the house discussion from "what do you like about this option?" to "what would you want in a house?" which was a much safer conversation for me and helps Andy hone down his focus, including creating an EPIC spreadsheet to quantify and compare those elements.
But we've got my student debt to figure in. And we're finally to a point in our snowballing where we're ready to attack this one head-on. I don't want to add another debt in when we're actually close to being out of it. It's tangible now: if we knuckle down, we can be done with my student debt in a year in a half. Eighteen months. How much broader my world will seem for it. So, yes, the housing argument sits against that, too, where I'm not keen to take on an albatross I don't have to, no matter how lovely its feathers are.
So here's where that leaves us, then: we're in a state of preparing, of chipping away that debt in extra hundred dollar payments at a time, of assessing both what we want and what we need, of determining what the right balance between want and need we should land on, of obsessively checking our accounts and reconfiguring the budget anywhere we can give ourselves more space (mostly me); of feeling both close and impossibly far from our goals.
Last year left us with some very major shifts.
- I was/am processing living with my permanent ostomy, which will be a lifelong process since it is a lifelong point of acceptance (see any post with text "Melvin and Me")
- Andy got a new position at work that has revitalized him in some good ways
- Andy began making "bad art" on his YouTube channel and hit some very important milestones for him. I'm so very proud of how much he's learned in this process and delight in seeing the joy it brings him.
- We switched our Ford Escape for a Chevy Volt, appreciating that the Escape was what met our needs at a different time of our lives and that the Volt mets our needs and our values better with where we are now.
- I crammed in a few more permanent changes with both a tattoo and Lasik eye surgery.
- I started taking a class through Heartland, and it's been immensely helpful to me to have a few places outside of work where I'm learning something new in a structured environment--this also includes starting voice lessons, and I'm very curious to see what I can actually do with this instrument.
There's just so much coming, clouds rolling ominously on the horizon. But, I love a good thunderstorm. I often express my anxiety by preparing to the point of preoccupation (yay for high functioning depression), and yet facing into 2019, I feel oddly reassured that I have placed safety nets where I needed to, exercised caution liberally, but still placed a lot of the pieces in the right positions. There's a number of places that need to be shifted into the right place to initiate the chain reaction, but we're still building to a summit of some as-of-yet intangible shift. Changes are coming. I cannot speak to how hard or easy that will make 2020, but 2019 is building toward them. I find myself looking toward the edge of the cliff--still a little ways off, but visible--and wondering what the view is going to look like by the end of the year.
Wishing you all the best 2019.
No comments:
Post a Comment