As a result, this month has mostly been about making plans for a future that is going to get really crazy. When Penn and I come back after Christmas my plan is for us to spend the month of January looking at and booking a wedding location and firmly setting a date. I'm also planning to take a winter term class. When I finished coursework last spring I told myself I never wanted to take another class again, but this is a class on writing a publishable article and if I take it I'm pretty much guaranteed a publication. I just can't pass up that opportunity. The class is only three weeks long and only meets for a few hours Monday through Thursday, so I think I can handle it. After that I plan to really buckle down on the prospectus work and get that defended by March. Then it's research, research, and more research. Hopefully I'll be ready to start working on chapters by July. Meanwhile, I'll be working on that summer project with my friends and prepping to teach the summer school course I'm teaching in July and August. And somewhere in between all of that work I'll be planning the wedding.
On top of all of that, Penn and I keep going back and forth on the issue of buying a house, but we've once again picked up our research on that and we've started thinking that it really does make sense to buy if we can. We have the money to make a good down payment, and the great tax break for new homebuyers has been extended so we could still qualify for it as long as we close on a place by June. The main reason we'd been putting off buying is that Penn didn't feel like we could afford a big enough, nice enough place and we kept thinking that maybe in four or five years when I'm finished with school and Penn has completed his current promotion cycle we'll attempt to move somewhere with more affordable real estate (which would be pretty much anywhere other than New York City or California). But we both really like everything about living here other than the fact that a freakin' townhouse can sell for $500,000. Oh, and the traffic sometimes blows but I've pretty much come to terms with that. Everything else is great, and we're not eager to leave here. So why plan for a future that involves moving when we might be equally happy just staying here? Also, I think both of us were bummed that we can't afford our dream house here, but we weren't really considering the fact that there are very few twenty-somethings who CAN afford their dream house. We had a long talk the other day and came to terms with the idea that we were both hoping to be able to afford homes like the ones our parents live in now but conveniently forgetting the fact that our parents haven't always lived in their houses, either. It was only later in our lives that our parents moved into the houses they now live in. So we reconfigured our expectations, and that helped us a lot. The other thing is that we kept thinking, "We could buy, but what if something happens and we have to move?" Well, what if we do? People sell houses every day.So now we're thinking maybe we shouldn't waste the next five years paying rent when we could make an investment in a home and hope that prices will go up while we're in it. Barring some complete financial collapse and a coup that overthrows the entire federal government (always possible, I guess), Penn's job will stay stable and allow us to afford to stay in a house, and housing prices will hopefully only go up. I think buying a house is always a huge risk. There's always the chance that we could buy and then realize we hate the neighborhood, or not be able to sell when we want to and end up stuck somewhere we don't want to be. But I think we're weighing that risk well, and we did already take that home buying class over the summer so we have a better idea than many homebuyers about what we're getting ourselves into. I don't know what's going to happen. We may talk to the bank and find out that we don't qualify for a big enough loan to let us buy something we'd be happy with after all, in which case we'll put off buying for another year until I finish school and get a real job. But at any rate, right now we're thinking of house hunting this spring and maybe attempting to get out of our lease, which would definitely be another big project.
So, by my count that is three really major projects all at once: wedding planning, house hunting, and dissertation writing. Any sane person would probably want to do those things separately, but here we are, crazily thinking we're somehow going to do all three in the next 18 months or so, while also continuing to keep up with regular life. I know we can do it without losing our minds, but right now I feel like I'm standing on a shore watching big waves roll in and getting ready to hold my breath and dive in head-first. I know it's going to feel good and be wonderful and worth any stress we have to go through. Basically, the next two years are going to be a total whirlwind, but if everything goes well I'll emerge on the other side of the chaos with a husband and a doctorate and a house. It's going to be a major identity shift on so many levels, but I feel ready for it.
It's just going to take lots and lots of focusing on what is really important and ignoring everything else. And maybe taking up some relaxing yoga classes or something.
No comments:
Post a Comment