House-Hunting

I have spent HOURS on the internet looking for a house to rent this summer. I can’t afford it, but I look almost every day anyway. I look at houses on the beach, boasting stunning ocean sunset views and proximity to all kinds of cool shit. I browse through the photographs of other people’s homes and day dream. I’m not sure why I do this to myself, because it does nothing more than make me remarkably unhappy in the long run (since I always end up turning the computer off in disgust rather than actually booking a trip). I look for college teaching jobs that I don’t want just because they happen to be near the ocean. I actually don’t want another job, I just want to be able to go the ocean a lot. Vacations are good enough – I don’t need to actually move anywhere right now. But … the last vacation just reminded me how much I don’t want to be stuck here all the time. So many I’m wrong. My inability to be happy with what I have is a disease. Back to the houses: who are these people who own huge beautiful homes on a stunningly gorgeous beach and DON’T LIVE IN THEM?! Do they have something better to do than live in a castle by the ocean? Perhaps they have several castles on various beaches? Where do these people get all that money? Literally nothing I could do would allow me the ability to afford such a place. I have no wealthy relatives who will hand down an inheritance, my job is at the bottom of the food chain, and I didn’t marry rich. I have no marketable skills – well, highly LUCRATIVE skills. I feel like I did everything wrong – made all the wrong decisions – and got stuck in a big, fat, steel trap. I would have to gnaw my leg off to get out, and I’m not willing to be legless quite yet. Maybe if I just got myself into one of those homes, I could claim squatter’s rights or something. Hole up with lots of weapons and refuse to leave. (That would probably ruin the California ambience, though.) Maybe if I quit something and saved all the money – quit going out, no more restaurants, bars, new clothes, shoes – then I could squirrel away the money. The problem with that plan is that eating out and seeing live music are probably the only things which keep me sane in this place. So I guess the choice is more vacations but more depressive mental illness, or the status quo banality of life. Shitty choices. But I have to go now, because I haven’t looked for houses yet today, and words are not my friend right now. I’m going to mentally check out and pretend to be what I’m not … YET.