learned helplessness
our house was built in the ‘50s. it still has its original oven and stovetop, although neither of them work. the natural finish flooring and incessant wood trim felt charming when we moved in; i think they’re driving me insane now.
when i got home from my trip, i did my usual thrice-a-year zillow search for a two-bedroom, 1.5-bath single-family home within a budget 50% higher than my current rent. and there were – ahem – three results.
those weren’t my only parameters – it also needs to be cat-friendly, have a washer and dryer – but we live in an area with a much higher proportion of renters than the national average, we skew younger, our median household income is less than half of what most single-family units require to qualify… i look at the numbers and the numbers don’t work.
i’d been annoyed a few hours earlier when i complained about the water pressure and the drain and the tile in one shower, and j said, “so use the other one.” but maybe he was on to something.
anyway: i’m blessed.
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before this house, we lived in an adorable mid-30s downtown cottage. the place was a wreck, but it really was charming, with arches and french doors and one tiny anteroom.
our landlord decided to sell – he was “retiring” from owning multiple properties – and the property management company that purchased it sight-unseen doubled the rent when it came time to resign the lease. we declined, which meant another round of house tours, and the price hike made a little more sense. somehow they’d gotten the impression that there was a washer, dryer, dishwasher, and additional bedroom – all of which might have almost justified their exorbitant price.
they sold it again a few years later.
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after the zillow thing, i continued to sulk and list all of my irritations in my head; for example, we took the terrible closet doors off their tracks and stashed them in a utility closet, so now i can see our cat crates and luggage on the top shelf and the mess of space bags and storage bins on the floor, from anywhere in our bedroom.
and then i started thinking about systems. i deal with business systems a lot for work – not capital-s Systems, but the structure of what people do and how they do it. something i harped on in my previous attempt at a newsletter is that software does not make a system. gmail is not an email management system; trello is not a project management system. they are ways to display and interact with your systems. so if you can’t keep up with your email account or your tasks, moving the same stuff to outlook or asana isn’t going to help.
if i could snap my fingers and live in a different house tomorrow, my closet would be equally as cluttered.
which means! this is not a problem, it’s a project.
it isn’t that the closet is too small or that there’s something else intrinsic to the closet that bothers me; i just don’t like looking at the stuff.
sometimes decluttering looks like putting things back where they belong; sometimes it looks like collecting items to donate; but sometimes it’s just realizing that you put stuff in a weird spot at some point and you can, uh, move it. use the other shower.
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this is something i’m noticing about myself more and more, that i never really internalized the freewill aspect of adulthood. it isn’t that i have a general tendency to complain or am bad at housework; it seems like there are things i don’t recognize as being tied to my comfort, and my comfort as being something to invest my resources into.
when did i become so utilitarian??
have i ever allowed myself an environment that feels good? have i always been so practical? why am i so resistant to pleasure?
i took a series of classes last year where my big revelation was about the anxiety i feel around “indulging” myself; that’s the word that kept coming up, this suspicion i feel when i attempt to indulge, gratify, surrender to my own appetite. “what are you after?” i ask myself, as if the answer shouldn’t always be satisfaction.
we’re getting a little deep here, but there’s a thread to follow about punishing and controlling one’s body through neglect of its physical space, its senses. in a world where pleasure exists, to live only without pain is spiteful indeed.
and also: attachment is suffering, etc.
feeling: 🔮 empowered | last modified 3 months, 3 weeks ago | reply via email