I haven’t written much lately because there hasn’t been much to report. Rebecca is working on the elevations and the exterior of the design while I try to sell my current home.

At moments, the process has felt painfully slow. But overall, I’ve felt surprisingly patient with everything (except for feeling terribly rejected every time someone comes to see my house and doesn’t want to buy it!).

I think part of my patience comes from feeling really comfortable where I am. I love the trees that I can see through all the windows of my house. I love the spaciousness of my home and the backyard that my dog can play in, and I feel very safe and protected here.

I’m not really looking forward to the hassle of moving and renting or living in a tiny space while I build. I’ve kind of been just waiting, taking one step at a time while I see how things unfold.

I know from past experience that worrying doesn’t help anything, and it would keep me from enjoying all the things I love about my current situation. I’ve put a lot of myself into my home, and I’ll be sad to leave it. The place where I live starts to become a part of me and of how I see myself. I associate it with comfort and familiarity.

I also know that almost without fail, things tend to evolve in a totally different direction than I expect them to. So it seems rather pointless trying to obsessively plan my next step, when I know there’s no way to predict the outcome.

I don’t know where I’ll live when (or if) my house sells. I could live with my mother and save some money, which would be a lovely option if she didn’t live 10 miles down highway 280. We get along great, and it would be nice to be in such a comfortable space for a while. But I’m not sure what I would do with Stevie, my pup, and I wonder how my patience would hold up fighting that traffic everyday.

I could also rent a home with a backyard and try to find a roommate. Or I could find a tiny apartment or a carriage house near downtown! So many options. The main thing is that I want it to be affordable (and by affordable I mean cheap) because I want to put every dime into the construction of the new home.

I’ve also been going back and forth about whether to start construction if my Buttercup home hasn’t sold yet. We still have a few months left in the design phase. Once we finalize the drawings and construction documents, I will have to set up a meeting with the neighborhood association and the historic board to see if they approve the plans before the city will issue me a building permit. I also want to bid out the entire project before I get started to see if I’m anywhere close to my budgeted amount.

So there are still a few months left of planning and permits before I could break ground, but my current sentiment is that I might go ahead and start even if I haven’t sold my home. I can at least get the foundation done with the savings I have, and then maybe I’ll find some creative ways to continue financing the project.

Who knows, we’ll wait and see!

I’ve been reading a book called Enough by John C. Bogle, the founder of Vanguard, a great book and one I’d highly recommend.

Here’s an excerpt from the first paragraph of the introduction:

At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, “Yes, but I have something he will never have… enough.”

That paragraph struck me because it’s so true. It’s sad that so many of us, despite all of our wealth and comforts, will never experience what it’s like to feel like we have enough.

So in the meantime, while I wait, I’m experimenting with what “enough” could look like in my own life.

(I’ve also been working on the interview I did with Rachel Rhinehart from Jones Valley! I’ve nearly finished transcribing it, and it’s no less than 10 pages long! So now I’ll start editing, to get it down to a length that some of you might read. But I promise to get that out soon while the information is still relevant 🙂 )