January 25th, 2010 by Neal
That’s how we do it.

Last night I pulled out an old journal and found the “Dream House” I designed when I was twenty-three. This novel, unlike anything I’ve ever written before, is an examination of what writing has meant to me. Of course, this is all gussied up in concepts of character and hidden behind a story, but novels essentially help me work through things. Before it was high, lofty concepts. The last two were me saying to myself that it’s all right to be optimistic and to fight evil and to do what I do with utter faith. This is more of the same, with the added benefit of, having found my optimism, being able to look back and see where I went wrong, and where I went right in ways that were unfeasible to survival. It’s kind of a love letter to that, with a nod to the consequences. Hard to explain this without telling the story, but that’s what’s going on. Sometimes I think I should just post these entries after the book is done, but eh. That’s what an archive is for if anyone cares that much.
At any rate, the house. I’ve been taking it, putting it in Google Sketch-Up (which is a shitload of fun) and putting it all together in a real-world model. I did it with the desk I’m building for myself, too, and I’m having a lot of fun creating what is essentially sculpture with this shit. I’ll share it at some point, but for now, it’s showing me how awesome and impractical the dream house is.
When I was 22 I resolved to work on houses until I was thirty, and, according to my fairly honest rough figures, I would be a millionaire and have the house of my dreams, which I then sketched. At that point, it was economically feasible to believe that every third house you repaired you would owe free and clear, and on the theory that a fifty percent mortgage paid off would allow you the money to fix a house and/or build a house, the math was there. All I had to do was scrimp and save through the first house and fix it.
The plan went well. On paper, I had 250,000 in equity at one point. But see, that’s the problem. I went bankrupt, and my house will be auctioned on the auction block on the fifth of next month, and yet I still technically have about 70,000 in equity. But then, I have comics that are worth 500 dollars… in theory. Things are only worth what people will pay for them, and like comics, real estate dried up.
The rich stayed rich, and the poor learned a lesson they’ll pay off for the next decade or so.
At the time I designed it, the lumber for the dream house to build it myself (and at the time I could, but now I cannot) would run about 120,000 dollars in material cost. Now, my dream house is more like 260,000, which puts it more and more out of reach. That’s also disregarding the cost of land, the fact that I am now happy in the city where before I wanted to run away, and the fact that if I had a shitload of money now, I wouldn’t spend it on a house. Not for a few more years, anyway.
But still I putz on this CAD-like thing, making rooms, adding trapdoors and Ashcroft hatches, the rope swing, the descending floor, the gun safes with bananas in them, the roof that opens to the stars. It’s a lot like writing a book, because it’s a world you’d like to be a part of but never can. Like the world of the rich, sometimes.
For all I know I’ll strike it rich with writing. For all I know I’ll die poor and alone. But the things that can keep you alive in either case (and the subject of Blood on the Keyboard) is that it’s far more important to be satisfied with what you do as you are doing it then the end result, necessarily, because life is a fleeting thing. The old punk ethic of “Why would you ever do something you couldn’t stand behind, no matter how asinine it seems to others?”
Dreaming isn’t about whether you can really fucking fly or punch a moose to Nebraska.
I’ve been here:
