On Friday, I signed a purchase and sales agreement for a house. It is a very nice place, in good shape, about 1000 square feet, and only about 2 miles from where I work. Closing is not until early January, so I won't have to worry about moving stuff right over the holidays (though I will have to be packing, of course, and looking for some new but cheap furniture). Overall, I am happy about my decision. It does of course mean a large debt and less money in the bank, but I have calculated that I can handle it. I'm not a big spender in any case, and I don't have many expenses beyond the basics of housing, food, utilities, etc. (though a good internet connection is almost a basic necessity to me!). I've even gotten into the practice of keeping the heat lower and taking less showers to use less water, though I'm not sure if these will really have much of an effect.
My whole immediate family will be together for Christmas this year - me and my father, both my brothers, and my sister-in-law and niece. Both of my brothers are living in Europe - the one with a family in Dresden, Germany, the other one going to school for a Ph.D. in Oxford, England, UK - so they will be making long trips. I am looking forward to this. The Christmas season has usually been one of my favorite times of year because I am lucky enough to have a family that gets along so well that our gatherings have a lot of the atmosphere of meetings of old, close friends, only even more so. The older I get, the more I have realized how lucky and privileged I have been to have this kind of relationship, and I sometimes feel ashamed of taking it for granted too often.
I continue to wrestle with the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, sometimes with a lot of success, sometimes with no success. In spite of the generally good condition of my "outside" life lately, my internal mental and emotional state has been veering between a combination of great happiness, confidence, and determination, and a combination of anxiety, self-hatred, depression, and negative thoughts and behaviors toward others and myself. In the course of my internal struggles, I am making the disturbing discovery that I am very ready to ignore the interests and needs of other people in my struggle to defeat or at least contain many of my negative emotions. I have long suspected that my OCD and the internal struggles that go with it have made me very self-centered in some respects, but recently this has become more serious and blatant than ever before. On the other hand, I am not even sure if I am doing any actual harm at all - my anxieties include an obsessive fear that I am causing harm to others without fully realizing it, so I tend to not trust my own perceptions.
Showing posts with label houses. Show all posts
Showing posts with label houses. Show all posts
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Sunday, December 5, 2010
News, good and bad
The good news is that I have agreed on a price for a house of my own, one that is nice and only about 2 miles from where I work. The agreed price is $156,000, which is very reasonable in this part of Massachusetts even for a small house in a down market. I haven't talked much about my house-hunting, but it has been an interesting process, and there are still quite a few steps left. I am going to the inspection on Monday.
The bad news is that my grandmother's health is going further downhill. She is my father's mother, my one surviving grandparent, and is 94 years old. She lives down in Texas, about 100 miles southwest of Dallas and some 40 miles west of Waco, near my aunt, who visits her at least once every week. She often described me as her favorite grandchild, and we were pretty close as I was growing up. My father and I have visited her the last two Septembers for her birthday, and I still write to her from time to time. For the last year or so, however, her health has deteriorated. She sleeps a lot, has lost quite a bit of weight, and needs more assistance taking care of her everyday needs like getting dressed, etc. She has usually been unable to hold extended conversations, and sometimes gets very confused. She moved from an assisted living area into a more complete nursing home area of the same facility. Now she often completely forgets where she is, which is considerably worse than she was just this past September when I visited her. My aunt and the people at the nursing home both think that she sleeps so much at least partly to escape the confusion and anxiety that she feels because she can not remember where she is or what is going on. I feel somewhat guilty for not writing to her since earlier in November, although I believe that she mostly relies on my aunt to read my letters to her now, and may not always fully understand them.
Overall, her health and quality of life, which were not good even over a year ago, are tragically declining more and more. It happens to almost everyone eventually, but that does not make it any less painful or sad when it does happen.
The bad news is that my grandmother's health is going further downhill. She is my father's mother, my one surviving grandparent, and is 94 years old. She lives down in Texas, about 100 miles southwest of Dallas and some 40 miles west of Waco, near my aunt, who visits her at least once every week. She often described me as her favorite grandchild, and we were pretty close as I was growing up. My father and I have visited her the last two Septembers for her birthday, and I still write to her from time to time. For the last year or so, however, her health has deteriorated. She sleeps a lot, has lost quite a bit of weight, and needs more assistance taking care of her everyday needs like getting dressed, etc. She has usually been unable to hold extended conversations, and sometimes gets very confused. She moved from an assisted living area into a more complete nursing home area of the same facility. Now she often completely forgets where she is, which is considerably worse than she was just this past September when I visited her. My aunt and the people at the nursing home both think that she sleeps so much at least partly to escape the confusion and anxiety that she feels because she can not remember where she is or what is going on. I feel somewhat guilty for not writing to her since earlier in November, although I believe that she mostly relies on my aunt to read my letters to her now, and may not always fully understand them.
Overall, her health and quality of life, which were not good even over a year ago, are tragically declining more and more. It happens to almost everyone eventually, but that does not make it any less painful or sad when it does happen.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Ups and downs
WARNING: Introspective, depressing, somewhat whiny post ahead. Please ignore if you don't want to read that kind of thing.
So again I took a long "vacation" away from blogging. The problem I have is that with my tendency to obsessiveness, once I get in the habit of checking this thing daily, I spend more and more of my time going around reading various peoples' blogs and occasionally get into an argument just for the heck of it. Clearly, this is unhealthy, so I step away. Unfortunately, I have a couple of other sites that I go to and do basically the same thing at when I'm not here. Why would any person with any intelligence or self-respect waste their time this way? In my case, at least, it's because bouncing around the internet getting involved in the occasional pointless argument is vastly more enjoyable than my other OCD-related activities. My other most common OCD related activities are:
1. Frequently worrying that I've run over animals, and sometimes people, in my car. This obsession has progressed to the point where I no longer totally trust my own senses, and worry that I've hit things even when I have no evidence for it at all, not even a bump.
2. Experiencing wild mood swings in which I alternately repeat certain abstract thoughts that make me happy, and think of reasons why those thoughts are nonsense and why I really should not be happy.
3. Generally coming up with reasons why I am a poor excuse for a human being who has utterly wasted his entire life.
I realize that these descriptions are incredibly vague, but describing the details of my thought process would take a lot more room and, more importantly, would be largely nonsense to anybody else. Still, these brief summaries should probably give a clue as to why wasting time on the internet is actually the most enjoyable aspect of my OCD. Of course, excessive internet usage is not the only unhealthy activity that I engage in as a way of trying to get relief from my OCD. I've also been eating lots of junk food and gaining some weight back. It sucks, but if you're a stress eater like I am, a jumbo box with a pound of Cheez-Its or Doritos or popcorn is surprisingly effective at calming the brain down after a bad day of recurring negative obsessions.
Anyway, on the brighter side of things, I have finally got my butt moving enough to start looking at houses. I went looking at a half dozen with my realtor last Saturday, and will go looking at some more this Saturday if I can figure out which ones on the list I want to look at by tomorrow (well, later today, actually). It's unfortunate that what should be my highest priority, along with other priorities like work, finances, life, etc., are fighting an uphill battle with my various facets of my OCD for attention in my brain - but that's the story of much of my life. After a meeting with my psychiatrist today, we agreed that it would be a good idea to look for both a support group and new prescription. Hopefully this will work well.
So again I took a long "vacation" away from blogging. The problem I have is that with my tendency to obsessiveness, once I get in the habit of checking this thing daily, I spend more and more of my time going around reading various peoples' blogs and occasionally get into an argument just for the heck of it. Clearly, this is unhealthy, so I step away. Unfortunately, I have a couple of other sites that I go to and do basically the same thing at when I'm not here. Why would any person with any intelligence or self-respect waste their time this way? In my case, at least, it's because bouncing around the internet getting involved in the occasional pointless argument is vastly more enjoyable than my other OCD-related activities. My other most common OCD related activities are:
1. Frequently worrying that I've run over animals, and sometimes people, in my car. This obsession has progressed to the point where I no longer totally trust my own senses, and worry that I've hit things even when I have no evidence for it at all, not even a bump.
2. Experiencing wild mood swings in which I alternately repeat certain abstract thoughts that make me happy, and think of reasons why those thoughts are nonsense and why I really should not be happy.
3. Generally coming up with reasons why I am a poor excuse for a human being who has utterly wasted his entire life.
I realize that these descriptions are incredibly vague, but describing the details of my thought process would take a lot more room and, more importantly, would be largely nonsense to anybody else. Still, these brief summaries should probably give a clue as to why wasting time on the internet is actually the most enjoyable aspect of my OCD. Of course, excessive internet usage is not the only unhealthy activity that I engage in as a way of trying to get relief from my OCD. I've also been eating lots of junk food and gaining some weight back. It sucks, but if you're a stress eater like I am, a jumbo box with a pound of Cheez-Its or Doritos or popcorn is surprisingly effective at calming the brain down after a bad day of recurring negative obsessions.
Anyway, on the brighter side of things, I have finally got my butt moving enough to start looking at houses. I went looking at a half dozen with my realtor last Saturday, and will go looking at some more this Saturday if I can figure out which ones on the list I want to look at by tomorrow (well, later today, actually). It's unfortunate that what should be my highest priority, along with other priorities like work, finances, life, etc., are fighting an uphill battle with my various facets of my OCD for attention in my brain - but that's the story of much of my life. After a meeting with my psychiatrist today, we agreed that it would be a good idea to look for both a support group and new prescription. Hopefully this will work well.
Monday, March 1, 2010
what I know about real estate could be written on my hand
I am going to be looking to buy a (small) house of my own soon, and I have been browsing around online at houses listed in my area. Looking for a place to actually buy is something that I have no previous experience of, which for me means lots and lots of anxiety and awkwardness and possibly making a fool out of myself. All I know about buying houses now are a few very simple ground rules like "avoid adjustable-rate mortgages", "if a place is ridiculously cheap, there's probably a good [i.e., bad] reason for it", "don't have the inspection done by someone recommended by the seller", and of course the important "be wary of any place that is described in the listing as having 'charm', or having 'potential' - unless you want to spend most of your time and money for the next couple of years basically rebuilding the place".
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)