My life and Legos
October 12, 2015
LB and I have been playing with Legos lately. (Truth? PiC and I have been playing with Legos a lot while LB gnaws on them, contemplatively.)
I connect a few, ze takes them for a taste test, pulls them apart, ponders the meaning of color.
While ze debates the delectability of yellow squares versus blue rectangles, I find myself aimlessly connecting more Legos. Invariably, I connect several larger rectangles using a variety of smaller pieces to make a platform and then build walls up.
I’ve never watched other people play with Legos but dollars to donuts they don’t always build a flat foundation first and a standard four walls before unleashing creativity. There’s simply no other way, though, not if I’m letting my subconscious lead the way. Nature or nurture questions aside, this is how I’m built to build. A firm foundation and then slowly build walls and a roof for protection.
Now that we’ve reached a particular level of stability, where I’m not viscerally worried that a missed paycheck or three would set us scrambling, my subconscious is now casting about for the next thing that comes after the walls.
What’s next?
What steps do I take to start building the next, perhaps final, stage of our life? Where do I go from here?
This could be the start of the renaissance of my life. I spent 15 years climbing out of and barricading ourselves against poverty. When I take a good look around, I realize that we can afford to take some risks now. Typically the time to take risks was a decade ago, in my 20s, but I couldn’t. Now, with a brand new child and aging parents on both sides, it would seem that now isn’t the time to take risks either. But! We have good savings, a variety of investments, and for now, we’re in relatively decent health. (Well. PiC is. We have good health insurance anyway.)
I don’t want to forever take and make the safe paved roads. I want that luxury of knowing when my next payday is, sure, but that desire is cohabiting with the need to grow and challenge myself.
I, no, WE can afford risk now. Some risks. I can’t afford to ignore the spark that pushes me to try. Dendrites die when you don’t use them. Motivation gutters when ignored too long, like a fire deprived of oxygen. I’ve long considered myself an intrinsically powered person, driven by circumstances. This period is, perhaps for the first time in my life, an opportunity to try for something purely because I want to and because I want it. Whatever it is. This is a real luxury that many of us enjoy in America / in a first world nation, should we be lucky enough to be born with a few resources and have both the awareness and ability to choose to partake of it.
For me that kind of stress never disappears.
I have a lot saved personally but once I buy my house in cash, I will mentally envision myself as having NOTHING left (not true) and stressed out about having to clear bills each month.. although how that differs from rent, I have no idea how my pea brain figures it out.
I can surely afford to take risks but for me, as we plan on buying the house in cash, I’ve been stockpiling cash and letting it sit and earn interest while we wait to find a place.
Or maybe I am just being silly and I should invest it & then sell at a loss if I need the cash right away. Who knows. I need to figure this out.. maybe I need some legos
Legos might help 🙂
There is certainly a difference between buying and renting because now you’re committed to that purchase long term (the way you’re planning) so you don’t have the option of just sizing down or leaving. I think that might be why you have that worry? Though you’re planning to buy outright and that’s much better IMO than a mortgage, it’s still a whackload of money in one swoop.
Definitely take a few risks, coming from someone who, at 37, is still nowhere near that point. I figure it’ll go like this: dental implants (especially if Tim manages to keep his benefits), push retirement savings waaaaay up, pay off mortgage, invest in rental property.
But even if I accomplish the first 2 next year, it’s going to take ages to pay off the mortgage (despite being pretty durn small) what with the cost of 2 sick people. Then we can save up a down payment for a rental property. Because, with just one income earner, I’m not risking our family’s well-being by taking on a second mortgage. No matter how many people tell me it’s a great way to help boost paying off your first mortgage.
Horrible as it is, I’m really counting on a real estate crash around the time we build up $15-20k.
Yeah it’s easy for all those people to talk – they’re not the ones who’d have to figure out what to do if your rental was vacant for a few months or you have a repair a couple years before you had the ready rental income to use for paying for that repair!
I’m still relatively conservative on the money side, hence reminding myself to try and take risks. It might take a year or two of peptalking 🙂
I remember when we got to this place in our lives! We ended up taking the year off (sort of– DH tried working at a start-up and I did a year post-doc while we were both on leave for a year from the university) and then seriously paying down our mortgage after that. Then DH quit his job to find one he likes better.
We hit another inflection point this year and are doing another leave from my job. When we get back, I think we’ll most likely renovate the kitchen, though #2 has inspired me to want to take a for real vacation sometime. We’ll see if that happens though.
Ohh man. I would really like to for us both to take a year off but that’s definitely not in the cards right now. Later, though, maybe that should be one of the goals. It will be! The mortgage, I’m hitting that now. Thanks for the reminder 🙂
A real vacation sounds wonderful.
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