Pre-Purchase Panic

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I'm not very good at "hurry up and wait."

My mind starts to race, and it doesn't always end up in the nicest places.

Because I'm in an over-sharing mood, here are a few of the things that I've been fretting over.

Robb and I, who have lived so frugally in order to afford this little house, will not be able to trim any more "extras" from our budget, go broke, and lose the house. (Big worry.)

All the contractors we have met with will turn out to be incompetent at everything except taking our money. (I've been reading renovation blogs. People love to blog about What Went Wrong.)

Our little house, after existing for so many years will fall to pieces under our watch. It will go the way of all the antiques that died once we to own them. Do I regret the beautiful silk parasol that got ripped in half in a tussle outside of Penn Station in NYC, or the mourning jewelry that broke in the bag on the way home from the antique fair, or all the vintage textiles that I've hastened to their early, tattered demise, or the mountain of vintage china and glass ware that Robb and I have smashed, due to our clumsiness? Sadly, I remember wrecking these things more vividly than I remember enjoying them. Guilt is a powerful force.

Every second of my spare time will be eaten up by the house, and we'll never hang out with our friends. We'll be all alone, inside of a half-restored cottage.

Robb and I will fight about renovations. He'll come up with complex schemes, and I won't have the skill or energy to get the job done. In my mind, the plan had always been that Robb, who had the skills, would use me for unskilled labor, and I would finally learn carpentry. God knows, I've failed to do this in over twelve years of working in scenic fabrication studios. I've never met a carpenter who's had the any interest in (or time for) teaching me how to use the power tools. But I've worked with plenty who have expressed their contempt for my lack of knowledge. Crikey, guys! How am I supposed to learn to use dangerous expensive machinery, if nobody is willing to teach?

We'll never fully unpack and we'll end up living in a tiny house, crammed full of disgorged boxes. This leads back to worries about never socializing, and losing all our friends.

We'll have spent every dime that we've worked so hard to save, done all the renovations, and the Big One will hit. Our house will be destroyed, and we'll learn about the scam that is earthquake insurance. Robb and I will spend the rest of our lives in a toxic FEMA trailer.

I worry that my job will be de-funded, and that there won't be any other local opportunities for my esoteric skills. Or that I'll get injured, and that neither of us will be working. This fear circles back to us going broke, and losing the house.

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!

As long as I'm able to step back from my fears, and laugh at myself, I'm okay. But sometimes that's not so easy. I'm really, perversely, insanely good at convincing myself that I can singlehandedly ruin my own life, and drag Robb down with me.

That's the downside of having a creative mind. You often get the Fertile Imagination for Disaster tossed in, free of charge.