Bummerville
For more than a year now, I've been struggling to bring balance to my life so that I can make music on my own terms. Honestly, I've mostly been failing, but recently I came up with a schedule that essentially works for me. What I've done is, I've learned to go on autopilot to handle my job and the rest of life's drudgery, and I've developed a habit of only scheduling my days off to make music (I don't bother trying to make music after work). This approach to managing my time has felt pretty good. In fact, it's felt so good that I recently declined a job offer and promotion in another part of the state because I thought it would ruin the balance I'd finally won. Yesterday, though, I got a letter which informed me that my rent will be increasing by more than thirty-six percent in a few months, and with this info my hard-won, balanced life was ruined nonetheless. Now, instead of using my upcoming free time as planned, I'll be wasting a lot of time on looking for a way to get out from under my landlord's greedy thumb. Affordable rents are so rare here that I might need to move somewhere else altogether, which means that I might need to find a new job and find a new place to live. Maybe I should have just accepted that recent job offer? If I'd taken it, I only would have needed to find a new place to live and then spend a few months getting used to working at a new job. Maybe restoring balance in that new situation wouldn't have been that difficult? I don't know. It's funny the way life works out sometimes.
