Moving On ...

It is both a deep relief, and a profound sadness, to realize that I have now made my final payment on the loan I took out for building my tiny house.  The very last loan payment to complete paying off a house I built, with love and with good and valued friends (some of whom are related to me), and which I never got to live in.  Four and a half years of regular payments (plus some additional amounts when I was able), all paid into the void of failed dreams and societal commitment.

Before I committed to the tiny house, I had finally, FINALLY, put my finances in order.  I had clawed my way back from a decade of unemployment, of living on welfare, of the fallout of bad choices and worse roommates.  Then I committed to another debt, the tiny house loan, because it was the best option I could see at the time to allow me to move home and help care for my Mum, after we lost my Dad.

That was Plan A.

Plan B was putting an addition over the kitchen.  That proved to be far more expensive than anticipated, and of too elongated a timeframe.

Plan C is what we actually went with:  a reworking of the old livingroom, where the cats and I have now lived for about two and a half years.  Ultimately, this option may be better than the other two preceding ones, at least where Quality of Care for family is concerned.  And I do not regret the move, nor the steps I have taken out of necessity to get here.

Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20 -- if I could have somehow told myself, from this vantage point, to just go with the livingroom conversion ... then perhaps, just perhaps, I might be well enough off to consider retiring.  But I wouldn't have learned everything that I have about tiny houses, and building, and planning and downsizing and Things I Truly Value.  I also wouldn't have had the wonderful, invaluable experiences what went with building the thing, and working with the aforesaid valued people.

I can close my eyes and SEE my tiny house, my tiny home, and feel the feeling of living there.  All wishful thinking, and Robert Frost's 'The Road Not Taken'.

Every time you wish away a bad experience, you wish away the lessons you learned from it.  I'm afraid I can't do that ... not with ANY of the bad experiences of my life.  I wouldn't be the person I am; and I have learned to love and appreciate the person I have become.  Warts and all, bad decisions and all, misadventures and all.   And I can still shed a tear for "what might have been" while appreciating how everything actually worked out.

Moving on to the next adventure.  ^_^

Spring Cleaning and Blog Reboot

I began this blog to record my journeys in decluttering, downsizing my copious stuff, and building a tiny house.  As Jim Steinman had Meat Loaf sing, "two out of three ain't bad", but circumstances didn't allow me to live in the house I had built.

It's March 25th, 2018 -- a day close to my Hobbitsh heart:  this is the anniversary of the day (on the modern calendar) when Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee destroyed the Great Ring and defeated Sauron.  It's also a fine Spring day among the Great Lakes (Canadian side), making it a good day for a virtual Spring Cleaning.  A reboot of this blog is on order -- it shall be a cobwebsite no longer!  Many thanks to my brother, Bruce McMicking, for the reminding nudge.

Unless true inspiration for a specific focus strikes me, this shall be a "shoes and ships and sealing wax, and cabbages and kings" kind of a blog.  There will be things about canoeing and elder care, about tiny houses and craft beer, perhaps some bits about art and writing and wine-making and my special-needs Siamese cats and travel and photography (underwater and not-) and .... if there's something you'd like to see me write about, you're invited to leave a polite note below.