I’m suffering from real estate envy. I feel this is some kind of personal failing, and very much in conflict with my normal philosophy to “be here now”. But I can hardly help it. The rest of my family lives in communities far from our over-hyped over-inflated Washington metropolitan area, and I’ve become bitten by the bug of comparison. When I see what my present home could be traded in for, my eyes get big.
Take Jacksonville, Florida, where my brother- and sister-in-law live. For a great deal less than my current house is worth, we could have a genuine craftsman bungalow under eighty year-old live oaks within walking distance of the St. Johns river and its many riverside parks. Or western New York, where I went to high school and where my parents and sister still live. In the smaller towns of the Finger Lakes region, I could buy a 13-room Victorian mansion with stained glass and original woodwork on ten acres.
Both of these places have other significant advantages over Washington. Traffic isn’t really an issue in either locale. Rural New York simply has no traffic. Jacksonville has very manageable traffic with an ample highway system. As for natural wonder, Jacksonville certainly enjoys superior weather, and the beautiful St. Johns River is a huge feature of life in that town (unlike the Potomac, which Washington mostly ignores). The Finger Lakes of New York have some of the world’s best scenery, with deep blue lakes, dozens of waterfalls, and vineyards on the steep hillsides.
So why are we still here in Washington? Much as we might fantasize, we have to make a living at something. Washington’s thriving local economy and robust job market are hard to match. Certainly western New York can’t touch the opportunities available here—that whole half of the state has been steadily depopulated for more than a hundred years. The number of people now living there is only a fraction of what it was in 1900. Jacksonville is a healthy city of about a million people, but the number of opportunities for two overachieving writer/artist types are still more limited than here.
The shame is that we can only live one life at a time. A lot of the attraction of these other houses is that they would come with other lives. In my dreams, I can live a life where I step onto a sunny porch and look out onto a large pasture full of wildflowers. There’s no sound of traffic or helicopters, only birdsong. In other dreams, I sleep in a stylishly modern city loft surrounded by funky boutiques and arty coffeehouses. I’m sure everyone has these alternate lives floating around in their heads.
It’s getting to the point where I feel I’d better stop looking for a while or I’ll forget to appreciate the many advantages of the place where we are. Yeah, the traffic stinks, and the air pollution’s no joke in the summer. There are way too many Type-A personalities around for comfort. But I get a huge kick out of the blending of cultures and cuisines in our melting pot suburb. The arts are a big addition to our quality of life, with all kinds of live music, theater, and museums. Our many close friendships would be very hard to leave.
While my house is no palace by the river, it isn’t at all shabby. My husband and I have put a great deal of effort into it making it just what we want. We’ve never considered whether our changes would make it more “saleable”, only whether we could make it more comfortable for ourselves. In the twelve years we’ve lived here, we’ve added gardens, stone patios, and our dream kitchen. Each spring when the patio arbor drips with roses and clematis blossoms, I pinch myself because I never thought I’d be drinking my morning coffee under anything so beautiful.
The trick is to find contentment with what you have while you have it. And when opportunity presents itself, to consider the birds in the bush openheartedly without forgetting about the bird in the hand. I have no idea where I’ll be five years from now, or even one year from now. But I hope I’m as happy as I am right this minute.
