Justifying want.

I'm a pretty obsessive person. This is both a good and bad thing. It does mean that I tend to follow through with things, if the obsessive phase lasts long enough. It means I am meticulous and organised: good traits for an editor. On the flip side, I am prone to irrational want. Put the slightest germ of an idea in my head, and if it thrills me, I am likely to feed it with hours of research and a vivid writer's imagination that makes it grow bigger and bigger until I am saying 'why not?' At which point something or someone, usually the much more practical Mister, brings me back to a disappointing reality.

Right now, I am obsessed with the idea of buying a new place to live in Brisbane. We've owned a unit in Norman Park, in the inner east, for just over six years. It's been a beloved home, an indispensable source of rental income while we were away and a nicely profitable investment.

When we first began to talk about leaving Sydney, the Mister admitted that the idea of moving back into our unit made him 'almost sick with boredom'. One of the things we are sad to be giving up is our inner-city life here in Sydney. How can we readjust to suburbia, with only one favourite restaurant within walking distance and a 'local' watering hole a 20-minute train ride away?

'I really only think I'd be happy moving back if could live in New Farm or something,' the Mister said. And that was the germ in my head.

Suddenly I have real estate alerts coming to my email every day and a complex budget spreadsheet with various scenarios to prove that we could afford it - if the Mister gets a job that pays at least as well as his current one (likely; he's an electrician and Brisbane needs tradesmen more than ever in the wake of the floods) and if I get the scholarship I am relying fairly heavily on (far from certain). The Mister would like to keep Norman Park and continue to rent it out - his financial ideology is that we always keep an upward momentum - to which I say that's not quite within our reach and we should sell, as buying in a more valuable suburb is 'moving up' anyway. He counters that with the fact that if I got a full time job again instead of starting a PhD we could afford anything we damn well want. At that point I tend to keep my mouth shut.

And of course, now I've found an apartment that I want desperately, it is perfect in every possible way and I've never seen anything else like it. It has two bedrooms. It has a huge private yard. It makes my art-deco-loving heart tremble.

Source

Amazingly, it is also reasonably affordable, according to my fabulous spreadsheet.

I am truly obsessed. I am consumed with want. I lay in bed and fantasise about rooms I've never seen in real life. I considered, briefly, flying to Brisbane for the next open house, or at least sending my parents on a reconnaissance mission.

I showed the Mister and he said 'Yep, that's pretty awesome. Oh well.' I showed my parents and they said 'Lovely, maybe once the Mister has a new job for six months or so your mortgagers will be willing to lend you some money.' And the obsessive, very childish part of me wants to stamp my feet and pout and say 'But this wont be there in six months, and it's perfect.' I know this is irrational and that of course our mortgagers wont lend us more money when neither of us has a job in Brisbane. It doesn't help.

I am more than a little ashamed of my tendency to 'want'. I like to think of myself as a non-capitalist (as far as it is possible to be in a first world urban life), non-materialist who eschews having 'things' in preference for having 'ethics', 'experiences' and 'knowledge'. So why do I find myself wanting something, a very, very expensive something, so badly it makes me want to burst? Why am I so unwilling to compromise, wanting my indulgent-academic-ideology cake and the inner-city-yuppie-lifestyle fork to eat it with as well?

I don't have much of an answer, but I have long given up on trying to curb my obsessive side. I guess this is why I married a very practical tradesman. Every artist/academic should have one; a dose of reality, every now and then, is probably quite a healthy thing.