Beginning a new life

Thought today was Tuesday. Put a lot of pressure on myself considering I closed on Wednesday and got here Thursday. In the past two days I have taken literally hundreds of photos of houses.
I forgot how friendly people are here off season. I forgot how great the air smells. I forgot…
I don’t have a rhythm yet to my life. I want to write fiction as I love it and almost all my friends would rather be fictional characters than the
real thing and I can’t blame them. I would say it’s a generational thing but even the young women in my life, my Goddaughter and niece aren’t girls who want to be talked about or seen. I respect that. The right to privacy might not be inherent in the Constitution completely or in ways we want it to be but it is natural.

I’m hoping that if this economic crisis does anything positive it brings us back to values that don’t include watching Brittany’s every move. I think it’s been proven that Katie Couric might be over 50 but is much sharper than somebody ten years younger. (Somebody having initials the inverse of mine. Somebody so much better when played by Tina Fey. Somebody who says she understands the needs of special needs children as she has one. But he’s six months old. Her foray into special needs hasn’t yet begun so she and the people who support her are frigging delusional if they think she knows what’s ahead. Oh my fourteen year old niece says this so much better than I do.)

I’m unsettled. I’m scared in ways I never expected to be, and ways that I did. I knew that I had a limited window in which to sell my apartment and I just made it. I knew the economy was going to go south, I just didn’t know when or how sharply.

Many people think I have it easy and create my own problems. That’s true to a point. What’s also true was that I put my apartment on the market Bear Stearns imploded. When I came back to New York Lehman Brothers went under. As my apartment was in Manhattan and my income very tied into the stock market these events were significant to me.

It’s simplistic and stupid to pretend otherwise. The buyers could have walked away from the contract. People with less money have walked away from contracts with more money

I feel inhibited and scared to say that money is important to me. That I almost wished the buyers would break the contract as this is a time of great economic uncertainty and I could easily get a job in New York. I might have hated it and all the reasons I wanted to leave would have been intensified but I would have felt secure.

I was going to take my apartment off the market when all of a sudden there was much interest in it. I know I probably wouldn’t have been able to make that kind of money for the next five or six years. It wasn’t a million or anything people think when they think Manhattan. On the other hand it wasn’t shabby.

I have been around the block often enough to know how hard it is to keep money. I have lived in Manhattan most of my life so it’s still difficult for me to understand the concept of not spending, spending, spending.

I just arrived here on Thursday, and I intellectually understand that I need time to adjust. I’m trying not to put pressure on myself, but I don’t know how much longer an all cash buyer will have an advantage. I could probably get a small mortgage and buy something incredible but the whole point of this is to be as unshackled from bills as possible. Because I didn’t have a mortgage in New York I was free to do what I wanted to do until the maintenance and health insurance costs became unbearable.

My friends who live here are summer people. Though they can’t wait until I find a house so they can come and approve or disapprove. It’s not up to them to make a life for me. It’s up to me.

A friend appointed me Myrtle Beach coordinator for a project. Nice but I know uh my hair stylist who is very tied into the community but away right now. I don’t feel comfortable asking people to participate in this project when they don’t know me yet. I’m not going to fall back on my “I have an invisible disability that makes strategic planning more difficult for me” excuse as I have proven over and over again I can strategically plan. Yet…

i realize that this project can help me meet people but I also have to focus on finding a house and this is the first time in two years I have had any breathing time.

Color me psyched but scared. Color me almost having a panic attack. I don’t have panic attacks anymore. I found out that they were an actual physical thyroid problem. I do have panicky feelings and my emotions change from moment to moment. I think that’s normal considering there are so many different options in just buying a house. Broker? Foreclosure? Pre-foreclosure? Bank foreclosure? For sale by owner?

Then there’s that project which culminates in less than month. Color me pink, yellow and with gag over mouth. Color me talking incessantly.

I want to buy a house as I do think this is a good time to but I’m scared to spend money. That seems to be a common instinct. Just as I shook my life up, America went to hell….

When I was in my 20’s it was so easy to just pick up and begin new lives. I lived abroad. I lived all over Long Island and Manhattan. I visited my sister for a weekend in Cambridge MA and came back to New York two years later with a college degree. It was very easy for me to meet new people and “bond” but hell it was the 70’s.

No longer near my 20’s this is difficult. I need to be able to structure my time better. I need to stop saying “I need…”

crossposted at ThoughtCafe