by Schuyler Bates - January 20, 2008
I recently turned 40. It wasn't pleasant, but it had a happy ending. Over the holidays this year, I hit an all time emotional low, the source of which was hazy and vague at the time because, well, I was hazy and vague the whole time. I'd started a huge swirl down the weekend before the holiday break, unable to figure out why I was so blue. Well, by the time New Year's rolled around and the seasonal bitch slap that is November 1 through January 2 finally relented, I realized what the issue was: There was no longer anything for me here in Birmingham, where I've lived for over 10 years. No career I'm married to, no job I like, no girl crazy about me (turns out she's just crazy, but I already knew that), no friends any longer because I began to see the superficiality of the relationships when I pealed back the well-worn veneer, and the dog I've had since 2002 that won't come in the house.
It was the dog that tipped the scales. A stupid dog.
I have two dogs right now. There's the husky/border collie mix mentioned above, and the lab mix I adopted a year ago November. She prefers it indoors. I have a nice backyard, which they've torn up (They're dogs!), but something clicked, or, more likely, short circuited.
For 3 years (okay, 15) I've had this dream, or fantasy, of having a little bit of acreage out in the woods where I'd try to live off the land as much as possible and heat some cool cabin with nothing but a wood burning stove. I think it's deep in the race to want to be a hostage to domesticated fire. It's a stupid dream, but it's mine.
And I don't want to have to confine my idiotic dogs to a small, fenced-in yard.
I called my mom before Christmas week and told her I was contemplating a move north, closer to the family, hoping to buy a modest homestead on the cheap where my full-time job would be cultivation, in every sense. Then, shortly after, signs started revealing themselves.
I'm not one who gives much credence to god and fate, but I was raised to believe that things happen for a reason. One day later, a book my mom sent me arrived, Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year Of Food Life. Two days later my oldest brother called, under the veiled premise of seeing "how things were going". When I told him some of the things on my mind, Two days later I had an entire realty catalogue of homes for sale with land. Five days later, Michael Pollan was interviewed on an NPR program to discuss his new book, In Defense Of Food. (Slate Magazine had a positive if somewhat anemic review around this time.) Same day, I got an email from my mom with a link to a real estate agent about a log cabin for sale on multiple acres, complete with a greenhouse and a well, 20 minutes away from the peeps. Guess how you have to heat the place? Go ahead: Guess.
Wrong!!!
This is where my superstition kicks in, because I've really been hesitant to write about this for fear of jinxing the whole deal. But what do I have left to lose, considering I've gained nothing?
The place is perfection, in only the way a highly flawed plan with no safety net can be imperfect. I've been able to think of nothing else since.
Here's the problem: I can't make the numbers work. Understand, now, that this is a modest place with a few acres and no central heat or air in central Ohio; it's not like it's a 16,000 square foot mountain retreat in Aspen. It's just an authentic log cabin not built from one of those horrible kits, with a modest living space, plenty of breathing room and a long lane.
But I just can't make the numbers work. I have a good credit history, and not a lot of debt. But I want to pay cash for the cabin, because I don't think I could walk into a bank and ask for $$$ large and, when they ask about my employment, I say, "Er, yeah, about that. Uh, I chop wood and raise chickens. Sometimes I chop the chickens and raise the wood. Doesn't pay real well but the hours are good and it's wonderful exercise." Yep. For this work, I need to be able to write a check for this place. And I can't seem to crunch the numbers to come out in my favor.
Then why do I think that doing anything and everything within my means to make this work would, well, save my life, literally? I don't mean to be overly somber, and I realize that with each waking in the morning we're all that much closer to death. But for about the last year, at the end of each day, I've felt palpably one day deader. (Note to self: That might make a nice title for a memoir.)
One hurdle is the trap of simply dragging all my own problems behind me like a dead space alien I've shot down in the desert only to adopt a bunch of new ones. That's the one currently that's keeping me from packing up the books and selling the piano. (I'll make you a deal and pay for the first tuning. Seriously. Great piano.) Hell, selling everything. Or giving it away. The harder and harder it is to get out of bed in the morning only sends me into a hangovered reverie in which I'm sipping homegrown, homemade vegetable juice on my back porch in my boxer shorts on a warm June morning trying to figure out why Moonpie's digging up the sweet corn and I accidentally devise a better way to tie up the 50 tomato plants bearing varying varieties of fruit that my mom and I will can this fall. (Moonpie's the husky/collie. The lab mix is, obviously, RC Cola.)
Why can't I have that?
So I've started a list. It's a good list: thorough, funny, irrelevant. And I can't remember when I've wanted something so badly, as insignificant as the object of my want is. So the list as of now basically reads:
1.) Make a list
But I just can't make the fucking numbers work, goddammit. Not because of greed or dalliance or presumption. I'm not looking to wile the days away sipping bourbon & Coke, muttering about heirloom green beans from seed to myself. (I am.) I can't make the numbers work because, while I'm not poor, I'm not exactly swimming in it. Numbers working? Can I?
I could cash in my stocks I accidentally bought at a pretty good time, hoping to hit another up trend this spring, and cash in my 401K (minus 10%?). I've been saving these for my retirement, but isn't that sort of what I'd be doing? Retiring? Just, you know, pretty early? The house I own now has, according to the city tax assessor, a current market value that's over twice what I owe on it. Though I don't think Jefferson County knows that my kitchen right now is a shabby woodworking shop, so you can knock a bunch off that asking price. But I don't want to put one more dime into this dump. I'm still ahead of the game because of the timing, but if the market doesn't recover through this winter and spring scoring me a significant profit I can liquidate, I ain't goin' anywhere.
Dare I shed the bitter cynicism and jaded sarcasm long enough to "man up", accept the signposts as valid, cut my losses (or, really, abandon any short term further gains) and sell my stocks and get to the business of doing whatever it takes to create a context in which I can honestly answer the question, "So what do you have to show for yourself?" and really, truly mean it, whatever that answer might turn out to be?
Verdict: Maybe. I'm easily overwhelmed. God may reside in the details, but the road to my own personal hell is paved with good re-inventions.
Schuyler Bates is a former snowboarder who'd like to make enough $$ to be a stay-at-home-drunk. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama and rarely blogs at The Outer Sanctum.