Hope and fear
Aug. 9th, 2020 03:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jkatkinaI've fallen off the DW horse again, which really shouldn't be, because this is a fascinating time and I should be documenting it.
I'm still working from home. The world is still mad right now. TL's still unemployed. The last few months have felt like melted ice cream: all goopy and running together and somehow wrong.
Inevitably, I've been grappling with feelings of helplessness and, interestingly, anger that at times threatens to just explode everywhere. None of us deserve this, none of us should be having to go through this, but here we are: at the mercy of our governments, of other people with foolish beliefs, of a merciless, mindless virus. And it's not fucking fair.
Everyone I know has tried their best to be a good person and to survive and thrive in a world that is stacked against most of us, and this is how that world is paying us back. I know there's really no rhyme or reason to anything, but my cultural background has instilled me with this gut feeling that good should be rewarded from above. (Though my family of origin is solidly atheist, our collective background is solidly WASPy and.... whatever the catholic version of WASPs are.) Framed charitably, I call this my sense of justice: in my worst moments it's a raging sense of entitlement. They're two sides of the same coin. Anyways, it's interesting feeling full of rage and helpless to change the situation. Horrible, and I'd rather we not be here, but here we are and I can at least frame it as interesting and channel it where it can do some good.
Now here's the hope part:
TL and I have been talking to a realtor and a mortgage broker. Very preliminary, but in a way it's pushing back against that selfsame helplessness. If we can move forward in no other part of my life (and believe me, I'm feeling just awesome about seeing other peoples' baby announcements these days, just peachy), then we can at least get things rolling here.
Now, staying in Vancouver is pretty much entirely out of the picture. I mourn it a little bit every time I do a google for Vancouver real estate and the only thing in our price range is one-bedroom condos.
We're not poor, and when we're both employed we do pretty well. We've worked hard to put away a bunch of money that I've been sitting on in a savings account for a good chunk of time, and that plus the trickle-down of Boomer wealth in the form of a loan from my dad means we have the money for a reasonable downpayment on an actual house: just not one in Vancouver, because fucking Vancouver is the most expensive city in North America.
We have a friend who's moved out to a satellite community about an hour out of the city, though, and she hasn't been there long but so far she's had really nice things to say about it. I looked at real estate in that city and we could afford a house there. A big enough one for a baby, ourselves, and even a home office. A garden. Maybe chickens. It's madness. It ignites a fire of hope in my chest. Moving out of the city would be sad, but, you know what? Fuck it. Living here is sad. Being made to feel poor because I can't afford a living situation big enough to have a family is FUCKING SAD. And nothing here's going to change, you know? IF anything it's going to get worse.
Outside of the city, though. Outside, things might get better.
I'm still working from home. The world is still mad right now. TL's still unemployed. The last few months have felt like melted ice cream: all goopy and running together and somehow wrong.
Inevitably, I've been grappling with feelings of helplessness and, interestingly, anger that at times threatens to just explode everywhere. None of us deserve this, none of us should be having to go through this, but here we are: at the mercy of our governments, of other people with foolish beliefs, of a merciless, mindless virus. And it's not fucking fair.
Everyone I know has tried their best to be a good person and to survive and thrive in a world that is stacked against most of us, and this is how that world is paying us back. I know there's really no rhyme or reason to anything, but my cultural background has instilled me with this gut feeling that good should be rewarded from above. (Though my family of origin is solidly atheist, our collective background is solidly WASPy and.... whatever the catholic version of WASPs are.) Framed charitably, I call this my sense of justice: in my worst moments it's a raging sense of entitlement. They're two sides of the same coin. Anyways, it's interesting feeling full of rage and helpless to change the situation. Horrible, and I'd rather we not be here, but here we are and I can at least frame it as interesting and channel it where it can do some good.
Now here's the hope part:
TL and I have been talking to a realtor and a mortgage broker. Very preliminary, but in a way it's pushing back against that selfsame helplessness. If we can move forward in no other part of my life (and believe me, I'm feeling just awesome about seeing other peoples' baby announcements these days, just peachy), then we can at least get things rolling here.
Now, staying in Vancouver is pretty much entirely out of the picture. I mourn it a little bit every time I do a google for Vancouver real estate and the only thing in our price range is one-bedroom condos.
We're not poor, and when we're both employed we do pretty well. We've worked hard to put away a bunch of money that I've been sitting on in a savings account for a good chunk of time, and that plus the trickle-down of Boomer wealth in the form of a loan from my dad means we have the money for a reasonable downpayment on an actual house: just not one in Vancouver, because fucking Vancouver is the most expensive city in North America.
We have a friend who's moved out to a satellite community about an hour out of the city, though, and she hasn't been there long but so far she's had really nice things to say about it. I looked at real estate in that city and we could afford a house there. A big enough one for a baby, ourselves, and even a home office. A garden. Maybe chickens. It's madness. It ignites a fire of hope in my chest. Moving out of the city would be sad, but, you know what? Fuck it. Living here is sad. Being made to feel poor because I can't afford a living situation big enough to have a family is FUCKING SAD. And nothing here's going to change, you know? IF anything it's going to get worse.
Outside of the city, though. Outside, things might get better.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-10 05:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-08-10 05:39 pm (UTC)Chickens sound like chaos, tbh, but my wife loves the idea. We've also got a friend we're hoping to coax out to move with us if we get chickens, lol.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-10 08:51 pm (UTC)--Rogan
no subject
Date: 2020-08-11 12:43 am (UTC)GOD I feel that. I look at the prices some of our old digs have gone up to..... shudder. And we're not even dancing on the knife's edge of hand-to-mouth employment anymore, though we were for a couple of years. That fear sticks around.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-13 02:54 am (UTC)