Just bear in mind the shoveling...

They say you can't go home again, and that's patently untrue. You absolutely can go home again, it's just that it usually raises uncomfortable questions like "who are you?" and "what are you doing in my house?"

"I'm closing the door now, goodbye. Please don't make me call the cops."

-the current tenant

Show me hardwood floors and I'll tell
you whatever you want to know.

And I take comfort in that sometimes. Life is about moving forward, not back. But I've been struggling recently with a sense of nostalgia...wait, is it still called nostalgia when it's financially based? Like, I've been pining for the days when I spent less than seventy percent of my income on rent ever since my old apartment back in my hometown popped up on Zillow the other day. Yes, I look at places on Zillow in my hometown, even though I have no plans to move back there again. Why? Because I love to torture myself, and torture myself I did. 

"That will be all your money please."

-landlords

I like where I live, I do, but it's expensive. I live in Santa Cruz...well, that's not true, I live twenty minutes outside of Santa Cruz, because in town they'll ask twenty-five hundred for a studio. With a straight face. I'm not an economist, but what I think has happened is that this once sleepy little beach town was discovered by tech people with offensive amounts of disposable income. They buy or rent here, driving up the cost of living, and commute to San Jose to do whatever tech people do. Code, I guess? 

And we have whatever nightmare 
fuel is going on here.

Whatever it is, the result is San Francisco rent without any of the nightlife, art, restaurants, and culture of the city. But Santa Cruz is fine. It has natural beauty, my friends live here, my job is here, it's fine. Oh, and the beach is nice, although I don't surf. A fact that seems to befuddle and enrage the locals who view it as some kind of prerequisite, but whatever. It's fine. Fine but, like I said, expensive. Like, bananas expensive, so when the two bedroom I rented in Rochester, NY turned up on the real estate site for what I think is either exactly the same, or at least very close to what I paid back in 2008, I was given pause. 

The kind of pause that makes me wonder if putting up with the months long winters of upstate New York might be a reasonable trade-off for--what's that thing adults are supposed to be able to achieve at some point in their lives? Financial stability? I'm unfamiliar with the concept myself, but I'm given to understand it's something to aspire to.

But then again, the shoveling...dear God, the shoveling...