Blue-Footed Musings

Every year around this time I start looking at lake cottages for sale. They are always out of my reach financially, though at one point they felt “only just” out of reach, as if at any moment we’d find the perfect one and we’d finally have enough money to feel comfortable making the stretch. Then came the Pandemic. Since then, lake houses have gotten crazy expensive, just like other homes, and our spending power has been eaten away by inflation.

Occasionally I see a cottage at a price that makes me hopeful, but only until I’ve finished reading the details. There’s always a reason many, many reasons why the price is lower. Here’s the sad truth: if a lakefront home in any Northeastern state is even close to affordable, that’s because it’s strictly seasonal, and/or one-bedroom, and/or a mobile home, and/or on rented land, and/or on an island, and/or dilapidated, and/or part of a high-cost HOA, and/or lacking plumbing and electricity, and/or not actually on a lake but merely in the same general vicinity, and/or is located outside the range any sane New Yorker or Bostonian would be willing to drive (their range is the same as mine, and they take everything that’s decent within that range).

Sometimes I wonder if I’d even like having a lake cottage. Not only are they pricey, but they come with a lot of extra work: more laundry, more cleaning, more outdoor maintenance, more bills, more driving, etc. I’m getting older and dislike the cold more, so moving in a northward direction, which is where many of the cottages are, might not be the best idea. Many lakes are warming due to climate change and have related problems, or have major pollution or invasive species, so finding a cottage is only half the battle. For example, who wants to spend a fortune on a cottage only to find that you can’t use the lake half the time due to toxic algae blooms or bacteria? You really have to do your research.

Anyway, we could simply rent a cottage or do some other type of summer vacation, but we don’t in part because a vacation for four is practically unaffordable. Given that, I have no business even thinking about buying a second home, which would be even more expensive. And yet, the dream refuses to die. Next summer you will find me parked in front of my computer again, searching various real-estate websites, looking for the impossible: an affordable, conveniently located, all-season, 2+ bedroom cottage on the shores of a deep, clean, beautiful lake.

I had my 30-year work anniversary last month. I got a card and a bonus from my employers. That was nice.

But I am so tired of my job! And after 30 years, I’m certainly justified in feeling that way. I mean, at some point, enough ought to be enough, right?

Were I younger and without dependents, maybe I’d jump ship. As things are, taking risks with my income doesn’t seem like a wise or responsible thing to do. I’m going to just have to keep toughing it out.

Being older does have its upsides, though, one of which is having learned a few things. I know that happiness is a state of mind and that the responsibility for how I feel lies with me. In the past, I’ve been able to make myself happy in my job by broadening its scope and trying new things (testing programs, writing documentation, inventing new puzzles, etc.). The question is, what new thing can I try now?

This is what happens when I sign up for daily or weekly e-mail subscriptions: I don’t read the e-mails, so they pile up in my in-box. When they accumulate into a daunting mass, I delete them. Right up until that moment when I finally let them go, I feel bad about ignoring them. Deleting them brings one last moment of regret, followed by relief that the obligation is gone.

Even though I know this, I keep signing up for these things, but I usually face reality quicker and delete the e-mails before they become an issue. Still, it took me months to pull the trigger on this year’s round of Dracula Daily, and I’ve got probably 30 poem-a-day e-mails cluttering up my in-box right now.

I should unsubscribe, but I probably won’t for a while. Next year Dracula Daily will start again, and who knows? Maybe I’ll finally read it (I won’t, but the aspiration refuses to die, and if I’m honest, I don’t want it to die). As for the poem-a-day e-mails massing in my in-box, most of them will soon be sent to the digital void unread.

But all e-mails end up in the void eventually, and though it would be nice to read them first, I realize that I can’t read everything that might interest me. Some of it (most of it!) has to pass me by, and I accept that. I also accept that I’m probably going to keep following this same ridiculous pattern for the rest of my life. But, for a change, I’m going to try not feeling bad about it.