So here it is...
I promised myself that I'd start writing in this journal again, but I've been ducking it. Truth be told, there were a few factors that directly led to my posting here less.
The first was that when I began this blog, my website was hosted by Ipowerweb and I had stashed most of my uploaded pics in a file on their server. Each pic was linked to that file. I switched to Register.com a while back, but was still paying Ipower in order to not lose the pic file. At some point I forgot to renew the account and most of my pics disappeared. I could have spent countless hours re-uploading the pics from my desktop, but couldn't find the time and frankly found the idea of reconstituting so many years of blog entries too depressing.
The second was that my wife's best friend in the world somehow discovered this journal and began to check it regularly, looking for pics of CJ. One of the things I like about LJ is how truly private it can be. LJ doesn't have the inherent privacy issues that say, a Facebook or Blogger site has. You can write whatever you like and only a handful of carefully selected people can read it. Thanks to that, I was always comfortable venting about personal issues, and occasionally those issues centered on my marriage. It's not a good idea to vent about a fight with your wife with her best friend looking over your shoulder.
The third bit is about how I've been in a profoundly depressed funk owing to recent events and looming change. Now let me be clear; No one is dying of anything and no one is getting divorced,(not yet anyway) but things are about to change. The short of it is, we're losing the loft.
Maria and I started dating just before the Olympics in 1996. A (thankfully) very close friend of ours was hired to take photos of the Paralympic's closing fireworks display from the vantage point of the William Oliver building in downtown Atlanta and had invited a bunch of us to enjoy a picnic dinner with her while she worked. That was the night we learned that there were loft apartments available just a stones throw from work. I toured the Metropolitan (across the street from the William Oliver) the next day, and ended up renting the top floor unit. The unit wasn't exactly built for comfort, but it did have one irresistable feature. You couldn't get onto the roof without going through my unit. I lived in that unit for three happy years until Maria and I decided to get married. She had rented the large two bedroom just downstairs from me and when the building went condo, buying hers seemed like the best option. This was before the intown condo boom began and they weren't sure anyone would willingly buy, so they offered us an insider price that was too good to pass up. At the same time, the insurance inspectors came around and decided to seal off my roof access, so my unit lost all it's appeal. We bought Maria's unit, got married, and a few years later did a re-fi and got the place next door. This was during a housing bubble that hadn't yet burst, so in an ongoing effort to merge two spaces into one, we began borrowing on our loan to cover incremental renovations. We were earnestly engaged in building a home.
I never questioned our decisions regarding the loft. Many of our friends often remarked that out loft "felt" like a home, not just an investment property. We'd been married about four years when, while browsing old photo albums, we came across this pic;
We were dumbstruck to realize that not only was this the very first photo we'd ever taken together, but that our future home was over our left shoulders. Because of this, I've always clung to the silly belief that we were destined to live here. Hence, my attachment.
Within the walls of this space we've lived, loved, gained and lost. We've sighed and screamed. We laid the foundations of a huge life which we shared with friends and family and finally conceived a perfect son. In 2007 we had this shot taken after putting on a neighborhood festival just two blocks away;
All of the refinancing and digging into debt wasn't an issue before 2008. Our agreement was always that Maria would be the chief bread winner. She wanted to climb the corporate ladder. I wanted to pursue art, which to say the least, guarantees no reliable fiscal cushion. Handshakes were exchanged and agreements struck. Everything was going fine until 2008. CJ was born and almost immediately upon returning from maternity leave, Maria was laid off. The housing bubble had burst and Wall Street had effectively torpedoed the world economy.
Maria is an alpha female to the nth degree, so naturally she'd be fine. She set up a website, started freelance consulting and has been doing fine. Unfortunately, it seems that two freelancers are not even remotely up to handling the cost of maintaining a place as expensive as ours.
The bank is going to foreclose on us just after the new year. We're moving into a three bedroom town home apartment on the other side of the park.(at least we'll still be downtowners)
The first was that when I began this blog, my website was hosted by Ipowerweb and I had stashed most of my uploaded pics in a file on their server. Each pic was linked to that file. I switched to Register.com a while back, but was still paying Ipower in order to not lose the pic file. At some point I forgot to renew the account and most of my pics disappeared. I could have spent countless hours re-uploading the pics from my desktop, but couldn't find the time and frankly found the idea of reconstituting so many years of blog entries too depressing.
The second was that my wife's best friend in the world somehow discovered this journal and began to check it regularly, looking for pics of CJ. One of the things I like about LJ is how truly private it can be. LJ doesn't have the inherent privacy issues that say, a Facebook or Blogger site has. You can write whatever you like and only a handful of carefully selected people can read it. Thanks to that, I was always comfortable venting about personal issues, and occasionally those issues centered on my marriage. It's not a good idea to vent about a fight with your wife with her best friend looking over your shoulder.
The third bit is about how I've been in a profoundly depressed funk owing to recent events and looming change. Now let me be clear; No one is dying of anything and no one is getting divorced,(not yet anyway) but things are about to change. The short of it is, we're losing the loft.
Maria and I started dating just before the Olympics in 1996. A (thankfully) very close friend of ours was hired to take photos of the Paralympic's closing fireworks display from the vantage point of the William Oliver building in downtown Atlanta and had invited a bunch of us to enjoy a picnic dinner with her while she worked. That was the night we learned that there were loft apartments available just a stones throw from work. I toured the Metropolitan (across the street from the William Oliver) the next day, and ended up renting the top floor unit. The unit wasn't exactly built for comfort, but it did have one irresistable feature. You couldn't get onto the roof without going through my unit. I lived in that unit for three happy years until Maria and I decided to get married. She had rented the large two bedroom just downstairs from me and when the building went condo, buying hers seemed like the best option. This was before the intown condo boom began and they weren't sure anyone would willingly buy, so they offered us an insider price that was too good to pass up. At the same time, the insurance inspectors came around and decided to seal off my roof access, so my unit lost all it's appeal. We bought Maria's unit, got married, and a few years later did a re-fi and got the place next door. This was during a housing bubble that hadn't yet burst, so in an ongoing effort to merge two spaces into one, we began borrowing on our loan to cover incremental renovations. We were earnestly engaged in building a home.
I never questioned our decisions regarding the loft. Many of our friends often remarked that out loft "felt" like a home, not just an investment property. We'd been married about four years when, while browsing old photo albums, we came across this pic;
We were dumbstruck to realize that not only was this the very first photo we'd ever taken together, but that our future home was over our left shoulders. Because of this, I've always clung to the silly belief that we were destined to live here. Hence, my attachment.
Within the walls of this space we've lived, loved, gained and lost. We've sighed and screamed. We laid the foundations of a huge life which we shared with friends and family and finally conceived a perfect son. In 2007 we had this shot taken after putting on a neighborhood festival just two blocks away;
All of the refinancing and digging into debt wasn't an issue before 2008. Our agreement was always that Maria would be the chief bread winner. She wanted to climb the corporate ladder. I wanted to pursue art, which to say the least, guarantees no reliable fiscal cushion. Handshakes were exchanged and agreements struck. Everything was going fine until 2008. CJ was born and almost immediately upon returning from maternity leave, Maria was laid off. The housing bubble had burst and Wall Street had effectively torpedoed the world economy.
Maria is an alpha female to the nth degree, so naturally she'd be fine. She set up a website, started freelance consulting and has been doing fine. Unfortunately, it seems that two freelancers are not even remotely up to handling the cost of maintaining a place as expensive as ours.
The bank is going to foreclose on us just after the new year. We're moving into a three bedroom town home apartment on the other side of the park.(at least we'll still be downtowners)