Getting There…
LIFE: A lot of the time I am blamed for being too stoic about the impact of 2020 on my life. So today, I decided to talk about my feelings and how they can help you value the road you’re heading down.
If this isn’t your first visit here we’ve already established that, as a relative minimalist, having a place of my own was my only material goal in life. After spending two months in my new home, I think I can finally give an honest answer to the question — “Was it a worthy goal?”.
To put it into context, it took me around two years and some odd months to get here. At the time of me writing this, “here” is a small apartment building overlooking a mountain, with plenty of living room space and a normal-sized bedroom. A metal statue of a bull’s head now hangs over a black glass metal kitchen table. In front of me a big-ass TV, and a similarly-styled metal clock eyeing me from the upper left corner of the room. A prized possession, an actual Metallica drum, hangs framed at the juxtaposition of a black, canary cage-style plant holder and yellow, round mood-light. Really diggin’ it. The minimalist in me does a barrel roll in his casket.
A vast majority of this time was spent finding a feeling in a physical space. Call it Feng Shui or being comfortable as fuck, makes no difference to me. And finding the right layout of the place for that feeling to appear. The buying process itself? While smooth as hot butter it was equally as slippery — my emotions slipping and sliding all over the place. The rabid 4-month sprint from getting a bank loan approved, and the actual purchase, to buying the right furniture and furnishing it, all during the pandemic and earthquake season (a newly discovered Croatian phenomenon) definitely took more of a toll than I’ll ever be able to fully admit. Me-man!
But please allow me to finish. I want to talk more about what made it the absolute perfect choice. It won’t be what you think it is.
What no one tells you about big life decisions, is that you make most of them with your gut. Even if you’re a spreadsheet, a pros and cons freak, at the decision-making moment it’s the feeling making the decision. It’s why we call it “Taking the plunge” instead of “Factoring in all variables and due diligenting off cliffs.” And as soon as I stepped into this place, I knew it was the right choice. The thing is, I didn’t step into it alone.
Brace yourselves, time for some Freudian couch stuff. While yours truly was methodically analyzing every square inch of the vibe I was feeling from the place, the lighting, the view, the balcony (THE BALCONY!), my mom was making happy, high-pitched corona-mask covered noises (didn’t actually help me play it cool with the realtor) yelling “Son this is it, baby!” and my dad was doing his Gestapo-like inspection of everything from pipes to gas installations. And just nodded. We really are different people, who complement each other because deep down in our core, my dad, mom and I are really similar. Since I have no other family model to base it on, I’ll likely die thinking that’s what families should be about, which is fine by me.
Back to that balcony. As far as alone time goes, for me nothing really beats an early morning shoot-a-round on a nearby hoop. That said, when my lazy bone kicks in, nothing beats a good book (or an issue of SLAM mag), sunshine and balcony time. The trifecta. I think the latter, for me, is where this feeling I was searching for when buying property materializes. Calm, happiness and peace. Feeling that golden warmth, digesting interesting words on paper, all the while thinking how lucky I am to have the luxury of being able to feel what I’m feeling right then and there. Or, here. Today, that scene also included a beautiful sadness.
As fast and hectic the process actually was, remembering us swearing and screaming at each other while assembling furniture (I swear my last name could just as easily have Colombian or Italian roots as it does Slovakian because our temper runs hot), made me realize that I actually had my parents to thank for my progressive views on the division of labor between sexes. From smashing down walls to painting ceilings, my mom and dad do it together. They are a team, not one man and one woman.
From that same balcony, I was now looking at stuff we bought together and knowing exactly where we got it and how stubborn I had to be to argue it past their arguments. They both have great taste and ideas, something which I never give them credit for (Mom, dad if you’re reading this it was somebody else typing those words, my home is being burgled by the Wakanda Liberation Front and I’m in the process of blinking twice). Then the big one, the earthquake that happened while we were in IKEA, where we found my coffee table and a newly-acquired sense of dread that the Earth could shatter a whole city. The feeling that all of Croatia shared in the days to follow.
Strangely, these were just the thoughts I needed to have to complete my home. I had suddenly realized it. The whole process, them being so into it, actually got us even closer together. The apartment wasn’t just my win, or their peace of mind because their only child doesn’t rent anymore, it was my family rallying around a bunch of walls and making it truly mine. Fuck me, I was sad about the fact that we had finished it! But owning it right now means so much more. To finally answer the question —Yeah, it was a worthy goal, but an even worthier pursuit.
Family. That’s what I felt in 2020. And I’m feeling it every day since, surrounded by my walls and those new memories.
