No wonder we never get ahead, someone pointed out to me recently after I complained that our current income is limiting our house remodeling: we live slow lives.
In fact by some standards we live very slow lives. I commute by bike when, during these cold months, I could drive home in the time it takes me to change into my warm biking clothes. I limit work-related tasks that cut into evenings at home. M takes only minimal out-of-home employment. I prefer to preserve my summers off. We resist too many evenings away from home. We’re trying to turn off the computer by 8:30 at night.
Keeping things slow, however, hasn’t dissuaded me from running a List: Put in new windows in the space of our future kitchen; build the future kitchen; re-floor our downstairs (and hey, why not the upstairs, too); turn the old kitchen space into a study; renovate the downstairs bathroom; build a deck/balcony; add a porch roof or two; develop our own water supply system; install a central vacuum; buy a Subaru, Jeep, minivan, shotgun, miter saw, new computer; and I’m only getting started. It’s a hopeful yet depressing endeavor, the List, since just saving towards projects is a long-term project in itself.
But while our pace of life is certainly stunting our financial growth and house metamorphicating, slowness allows a certain accepting of the “fierce urgency of now” (I Have a Dream): Playing with and reading to N (for weeks some afternoons, it seems); singing with ourselves and a band; occasional writing; gardening; going to bed at a reasonable hour; eating home-grown food made from scratch; sitting in front of the toasty wood stove. And there are always free projects to do around the house, for when I’m needing tangible productivity.
I can only try to keep my dreams balanced between the part of me that wants to fix up the house at gut-wrenching speed and the other parts of my rich life that do not afford financial progress yet are incontrovertibly priceless.
