Fate leads him who follows it, and drags him who resist.
Is it all about luck, or is there something predestined. Is it chance or fate or completely random
Somehow things in my life have always seemed to work out in one way or the other. Perhaps not always on the timetable I would have liked, but worked out nonetheless. Work is always a prime example of this. I was just a young kid working at a blue collar job in a lumberyard. Hauling concrete, 2x4s, drywall. I thought that was all that I needed in life... or that there was in life. Then things in my mind changed, and I was ashamed to work there.
Regardless of that, I felt a panic about changing my life and right when things seemed to peak in that arena, suddenly my friend Joey is able to get me into a tech job at the company he was at (the Circus). I suffered there for years to the point of feeling suicidal I was so desperate to escape. Then, right when things seemed to be at their worst, Lynn who I had briefly worked there with and beaome friends with gets me into an interview at a job her mom works at.
I felt cautious about the change, but once again a change was provided. Of course, it turned out the Playpen was an even more horrible job than the Circus. Two years of sheer torture in which I found myself back in the most dire situation of wanting to be dead over having to go to work everyday. But, once again... circumstances seemed to work out and the Consulting Guy I worked under there took me into his company and I was provided with yet more opportunity.
Now, it hasn't always been roses there as the work was often stressful and the amount of time that was asked of me was sometimes impossible. But, my boss is one of the most fair, trustworthy people I've ever known. For all the mediocre, the bad and the horrendously suicidal I could not have gotten where I am without having to go through the path I did. And it just oddly seemed at some of my most desperate times, a solution seemed to appear.
It makes me ponder how many other solutions have "appeared" in my life that I did not take. And where would those choices have taken me instead.
It's not only in work that these strange circumstances developed. Or perhaps this is just "optimism", and because I am so unfamiliar with it I don't understand how it works in a person's day to day life and perception.
I was miserable in my final years in the city. The relationships I had with most people were unfulfilling and toxic. I moved and almost immediately a solution presented itself and I met the person that I would eventually marry. I was depressed about my friendships and such, but I hadn't even been looking when it happened. That was always a bit of wisdom I remembered from even my youngest days... that often things presented themselves when you didn't know you were even looking for them.
We decided to get married and get a house. The decision to marry was some time in fall or winter of 2019. It was St. Patrick's weekend 2020 when I met with the Doctor at the Call to ask him if he'd come to New Orleans for the wedding, sort of an "official" announcement of it all. The Sparrow and I had already spent weeks and months discussing the plan. Suddenly, the fake "pandemic" hit that Monday and society in all its stupidity went crazy. There were lockdowns and masks and every kind of pseudo-science pushing the sheep along. We thought for sure we were screwed and our dream of a wedding in our favorite city was gone.
Even just a month before Mardi Gras we were minutes away from changing the destination and just going to Florida. But, that bizarre chance circumstance presented itself. Suddenly, after the officiant urged us not to change our minds, we realized we were saving literal hundreds of dollars on the trip. So much so we were able to afford to pay for the Sparrow's family's rooms in cash. We thought the Covid lunacy would screw us, but it actually saved us in a way. While all the other morons were hiding in their houses we were down in the French Quarter at one of the most unique moments in Mardi Gras history.
As the lunacy with all the Coof true believers continued we got back here and needed to find a house. The housing market went crazy as people who had previously been panic buying toilet paper and Spam were suddenly panic buying whole houses. This worked out ridiculously well for us when I was selling my house, somehow right at the perfect moment. It didn't sell immediately, but when it eventually did I made a profit of about $100,000 over the price I'd paid for the thing, plus another 30K because of how much I'd already paid on the mortgage there.
Again, circumstances in my life seemed dire, yet it was all weirdly working out. And not just "working out" but working out really well to mine, and our, benefit. Was I just seeing what I wanted to see? Was there really something more happening here? Was it all just random chance? Is it human nature to want to create some greater story out of the ordinary so the individual can feel bigger and more important that they are?
Then we were thrown out there to have to find a house. It seemed dire as the market had not cooled down and people were overpaying like crazy for houses. Ones would come on the market on a Thursday and have three or four offers on them by Sunday. I think at the time I thought I was going to be stuck living in the Sparrow and his brother's apartment for the rest of the year.
Yet again though, "it" happened. A house came up that fit many of our desires... not everything on the list, but enough to consider it. We saw it the day it was listed and figured there was no way we'd get it. We debated from that Thursday into the weekend and said we'd call that Sunday just to see if it was still available. Now, in this crazy, mad housing market where people were frothing at the mouth for any shack we just assumed it would be gone.
It wasn't though. It was still available and had no offers on it at all. The realtor said she had another couple that seemed interested, but they'd not told her they wanted to make an offer. And just like that, our offer was accepted and the house was ours. We'd been adamant that we would absolutely NOT pay over the asking price... and we didn't. There's actually a whole other story in there about another house we put an offer on a couple months before that turned into a disaster. That situation had only added to our sense of panic about not finding anything, and yet we did.
And once again, as luck would have it, we secured our mortgage when the interest rates were just above the lowest they'd been in I don't know how long. So we were paying at 2.5%. I cannot even fathom the circumstances behind how we managed to time things that perfectly. But, it just all worked out. AND, we were able to put over 30% into our downpayment thanks to the profit on the other house.
I was thinking about all these circumstances and situations this morning as I was once again messing with the mortgage calculators on the bank's website. I am desperate for us to figure out how to increase our extra principal payments to at least $3000 a month. I think we could do it, with only slightly more pain than we feel now as far as extra cash goes. We do a lot of spending on shit we don't necessarily need. Often justifying it by saying we "deserve" this or that because of the extra we already do to tackle the mortgage.
That was another thing that somehow worked out for me in the end. I'd carried credit card debt my entire life. It is shameful to think of the amount of my own income that was lost in interest payments to these companies. Yet, I got it all paid off right around the time in 2020 when everything went crazy. And I even paid the Jeep off three years early too. I was a financial failure most of my adult life, yet it all worked out. I guess maybe I learned from my mistakes?
We still need to do a budget, but I know myself and I know if we just get rid of the cash and throw it at the house then there's no concern about spending the money somewhere else. I've lived poor my whole life more or less. And the Sparrow has always been a penny-pincher living below his means. There's no reason we can't do this. We do have that damned furnace we need to pay off. $8900 in total, minus the $500 I just threw at it today. We've got until January 2025 to pay it off with no interest.
I think the Sparrow is right that a budget would help us figure this all out. I just use the excuse that our spending isn't "regular" outside of bills, so how could we even determine what we need where. I know it's an excuse. And I think to myself, well let's just have a "no spend" month here and there. We have enough food where we wouldn't necessarily need to grocery shop at all beyond milk and meats. We don't *need* anything else really...
I think I've lost my train of thought though we could tie this all back together with me contemplating on how, because my mental energy is so focused on this mortgage (just as it was on getting new jobs, houses, relationships etc etc) perhaps some kind of solution will present itself. It seems to be the way it goes. I even read an Emerson quote recently where he stated the same:
"Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen."
Sounds like a bunch of hokum... but then again. Actually, this all reminds me of that celebrity New Age bullshit from years ago called The Secret.
A funny thing happened as I stepped away from this for a second. I realized the exact opposite is also true all at once. As we've set out to achieve this goal things like needing a new furnace have been constantly happening to divert our attention away from the mortgage. Things as big as car repairs, thousands of dollars in dental work. We literally spent thousand when having to deal with all these kittens and the cost of getting them fixed. Appliances that died.
Maybe it IS optimism in the end I am talking about here. Because I feel like in the past I would have flipped out about all these emergencies and expenses delaying our end goals. Now I seem to accept them so much as a part of life, of the "way things are" that I didn't even give it thought at first. Who am I kidding... I've rarely had goals in my life.
This brings me to an even more appropriate quote about life. One I have no clue who coined: Shit Happens.
Somehow things in my life have always seemed to work out in one way or the other. Perhaps not always on the timetable I would have liked, but worked out nonetheless. Work is always a prime example of this. I was just a young kid working at a blue collar job in a lumberyard. Hauling concrete, 2x4s, drywall. I thought that was all that I needed in life... or that there was in life. Then things in my mind changed, and I was ashamed to work there.
Regardless of that, I felt a panic about changing my life and right when things seemed to peak in that arena, suddenly my friend Joey is able to get me into a tech job at the company he was at (the Circus). I suffered there for years to the point of feeling suicidal I was so desperate to escape. Then, right when things seemed to be at their worst, Lynn who I had briefly worked there with and beaome friends with gets me into an interview at a job her mom works at.
I felt cautious about the change, but once again a change was provided. Of course, it turned out the Playpen was an even more horrible job than the Circus. Two years of sheer torture in which I found myself back in the most dire situation of wanting to be dead over having to go to work everyday. But, once again... circumstances seemed to work out and the Consulting Guy I worked under there took me into his company and I was provided with yet more opportunity.
Now, it hasn't always been roses there as the work was often stressful and the amount of time that was asked of me was sometimes impossible. But, my boss is one of the most fair, trustworthy people I've ever known. For all the mediocre, the bad and the horrendously suicidal I could not have gotten where I am without having to go through the path I did. And it just oddly seemed at some of my most desperate times, a solution seemed to appear.
It makes me ponder how many other solutions have "appeared" in my life that I did not take. And where would those choices have taken me instead.
It's not only in work that these strange circumstances developed. Or perhaps this is just "optimism", and because I am so unfamiliar with it I don't understand how it works in a person's day to day life and perception.
I was miserable in my final years in the city. The relationships I had with most people were unfulfilling and toxic. I moved and almost immediately a solution presented itself and I met the person that I would eventually marry. I was depressed about my friendships and such, but I hadn't even been looking when it happened. That was always a bit of wisdom I remembered from even my youngest days... that often things presented themselves when you didn't know you were even looking for them.
We decided to get married and get a house. The decision to marry was some time in fall or winter of 2019. It was St. Patrick's weekend 2020 when I met with the Doctor at the Call to ask him if he'd come to New Orleans for the wedding, sort of an "official" announcement of it all. The Sparrow and I had already spent weeks and months discussing the plan. Suddenly, the fake "pandemic" hit that Monday and society in all its stupidity went crazy. There were lockdowns and masks and every kind of pseudo-science pushing the sheep along. We thought for sure we were screwed and our dream of a wedding in our favorite city was gone.
Even just a month before Mardi Gras we were minutes away from changing the destination and just going to Florida. But, that bizarre chance circumstance presented itself. Suddenly, after the officiant urged us not to change our minds, we realized we were saving literal hundreds of dollars on the trip. So much so we were able to afford to pay for the Sparrow's family's rooms in cash. We thought the Covid lunacy would screw us, but it actually saved us in a way. While all the other morons were hiding in their houses we were down in the French Quarter at one of the most unique moments in Mardi Gras history.
As the lunacy with all the Coof true believers continued we got back here and needed to find a house. The housing market went crazy as people who had previously been panic buying toilet paper and Spam were suddenly panic buying whole houses. This worked out ridiculously well for us when I was selling my house, somehow right at the perfect moment. It didn't sell immediately, but when it eventually did I made a profit of about $100,000 over the price I'd paid for the thing, plus another 30K because of how much I'd already paid on the mortgage there.
Again, circumstances in my life seemed dire, yet it was all weirdly working out. And not just "working out" but working out really well to mine, and our, benefit. Was I just seeing what I wanted to see? Was there really something more happening here? Was it all just random chance? Is it human nature to want to create some greater story out of the ordinary so the individual can feel bigger and more important that they are?
Then we were thrown out there to have to find a house. It seemed dire as the market had not cooled down and people were overpaying like crazy for houses. Ones would come on the market on a Thursday and have three or four offers on them by Sunday. I think at the time I thought I was going to be stuck living in the Sparrow and his brother's apartment for the rest of the year.
Yet again though, "it" happened. A house came up that fit many of our desires... not everything on the list, but enough to consider it. We saw it the day it was listed and figured there was no way we'd get it. We debated from that Thursday into the weekend and said we'd call that Sunday just to see if it was still available. Now, in this crazy, mad housing market where people were frothing at the mouth for any shack we just assumed it would be gone.
It wasn't though. It was still available and had no offers on it at all. The realtor said she had another couple that seemed interested, but they'd not told her they wanted to make an offer. And just like that, our offer was accepted and the house was ours. We'd been adamant that we would absolutely NOT pay over the asking price... and we didn't. There's actually a whole other story in there about another house we put an offer on a couple months before that turned into a disaster. That situation had only added to our sense of panic about not finding anything, and yet we did.
And once again, as luck would have it, we secured our mortgage when the interest rates were just above the lowest they'd been in I don't know how long. So we were paying at 2.5%. I cannot even fathom the circumstances behind how we managed to time things that perfectly. But, it just all worked out. AND, we were able to put over 30% into our downpayment thanks to the profit on the other house.
I was thinking about all these circumstances and situations this morning as I was once again messing with the mortgage calculators on the bank's website. I am desperate for us to figure out how to increase our extra principal payments to at least $3000 a month. I think we could do it, with only slightly more pain than we feel now as far as extra cash goes. We do a lot of spending on shit we don't necessarily need. Often justifying it by saying we "deserve" this or that because of the extra we already do to tackle the mortgage.
That was another thing that somehow worked out for me in the end. I'd carried credit card debt my entire life. It is shameful to think of the amount of my own income that was lost in interest payments to these companies. Yet, I got it all paid off right around the time in 2020 when everything went crazy. And I even paid the Jeep off three years early too. I was a financial failure most of my adult life, yet it all worked out. I guess maybe I learned from my mistakes?
We still need to do a budget, but I know myself and I know if we just get rid of the cash and throw it at the house then there's no concern about spending the money somewhere else. I've lived poor my whole life more or less. And the Sparrow has always been a penny-pincher living below his means. There's no reason we can't do this. We do have that damned furnace we need to pay off. $8900 in total, minus the $500 I just threw at it today. We've got until January 2025 to pay it off with no interest.
I think the Sparrow is right that a budget would help us figure this all out. I just use the excuse that our spending isn't "regular" outside of bills, so how could we even determine what we need where. I know it's an excuse. And I think to myself, well let's just have a "no spend" month here and there. We have enough food where we wouldn't necessarily need to grocery shop at all beyond milk and meats. We don't *need* anything else really...
I think I've lost my train of thought though we could tie this all back together with me contemplating on how, because my mental energy is so focused on this mortgage (just as it was on getting new jobs, houses, relationships etc etc) perhaps some kind of solution will present itself. It seems to be the way it goes. I even read an Emerson quote recently where he stated the same:
"Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen."
Sounds like a bunch of hokum... but then again. Actually, this all reminds me of that celebrity New Age bullshit from years ago called The Secret.
A funny thing happened as I stepped away from this for a second. I realized the exact opposite is also true all at once. As we've set out to achieve this goal things like needing a new furnace have been constantly happening to divert our attention away from the mortgage. Things as big as car repairs, thousands of dollars in dental work. We literally spent thousand when having to deal with all these kittens and the cost of getting them fixed. Appliances that died.
Maybe it IS optimism in the end I am talking about here. Because I feel like in the past I would have flipped out about all these emergencies and expenses delaying our end goals. Now I seem to accept them so much as a part of life, of the "way things are" that I didn't even give it thought at first. Who am I kidding... I've rarely had goals in my life.
This brings me to an even more appropriate quote about life. One I have no clue who coined: Shit Happens.