Rent vs Buy

For a number of years after we were married, my husband and I rented. We did not have the cash for the down payment of a house, and even if we did, we were not really to make such a financial commitment. So we rented.

I did not mind renting. I did not think that our rent checks were being wasted. I know others did (real estate agents, for instance), but we got a place to stay, and that seemed adequate trade for the rent money. I mean, if something happened to the house – if the house needed a new air conditioner, for instance, it really did not affect us financially.

The only thing I did not like was, sometimes, they way I was treated because I was a renter. People expect, when you are renting, that you are not as good as homeowners. Yeah, you can say I am full of it, but I have heard someone's voice change after learning that I was a renter. Well, it was great when the gutter salespeople came by: "I'm sorry, but I am a renter."

Renters get a bad rap, I suppose, because some renters don't take good care of the property they inhabit. You know, there is not much of a financial incentive to do so – a number of rentals I have had seem to do everything they can to retain your deposit even if there is nothing wrong with the apartment or house at the end of the rental agreement. The property is not yours – and some treat is less preciously because of that. That's what some think renters do – they don't take care of the property as well because they don't have a financial reason to do so. Oh, and perhaps as a rule, this happens more often than naught.

I have been thinking about the direction of my life lately, and I have been treating my life as a renter. I have not been owning my life, just renting it. There are things I want to do, things I want to write.

In my blog, I used the following phrase to introduce my blog: "I started blogging to improve my writing; I really did. Painters don't start with masterpieces – they start on scraps of paper, and even when planning a great work, they do many other drawings in preparation. I think writing is the same. You just don't start and finish a novel by merrily typing into the computer; you experiment. Blogging is sort of like a writer's doodling. So this is my scratch pad of sorts. This is less than scraps of paper actually, just 1s and 0s on your computer screen."

Well, after a few years of writing this blog, I have not really done what I set out to do. Yeah, my writing may have gotten marginally better, but I have not started any serious writing.

Last month ~Deb gave up her blog, and I have been thinking about doing the same. Temporarily or permanently, I don't know.

I am not stopping this blog because I have run out of ideas or because I have gotten any stalkers. I just want to spend my time doing other things. I have enjoyed this blog, I have enjoyed the people I have met, and I have enjoyed the whole blogging experience.

I guess I want to start owning my life. We have very little time on this earth, and I need to spend it doing what I want to do, what I feel called to do. Now I don't know if I will be back next week, next month or never again, I could not tell you. Personally, I hope I will be able to write, really write, and not come back to this blog. It's not that it is unimportant. It is that I feel called to write a novel. I am a bit scared, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.

I will miss writing every day or several times per week. But it is time for me to move on.

Note: I have one post scheduled to get published some time in August. But it is already in the queue. Other than that, I may or may not be back. We will just have to see.