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Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Giving up the search: Herspective

Have you ever done this? You have an idea in your head that you cannot purge so you stay up into the wee hours of the night searching and searching through webpages, blogs, listings and all the internet garbage you can take until you finally collapse into bed around 7:30 am. I'm sure we can all relate now and then to this scenario, we all have those moments where we can't get something out of our head so we do whatever we can to cleanse the thought from our brains. In an earlier post Chris touched on the fact that we are thinking about moving to New Brunswick in the next year and so I decided to start looking at real estate in a few of the major towns and townships surrounding Saint John to get a feel for what's out there. 



What started as an innocent curiosity morphed into an all encompassing obsession to find the perfect house in the perfect neighborhood at the perfect price on a perfect street, with perfect neighbors, perfect, perfect, PERFECT!!! Sigh, it's funny how quickly best intentions can turn to shit. I look back on the last few weeks and wonder where it all went wrong. I've never been one to put much stock in having a "perfect" life, far from it in fact so why am I all of a sudden obsessing over this idea of "the perfect house"? I'm sure one much smarter than I could relate the actual psychology behind it all but I think if you strip this all down it boils down to this: there's always something better or FOMO -Fear Of Missing Out. 



Apparently FOMO is a real thing psychologists and experts have been studying for quite some time now. According to the interwebs, FOMO is "anxiety that an exciting or interesting event may currently be happening elsewhere." This is typically how it plays out for me, we'll find a house I love and I say to Chris, "this is it, this is the one" to which he usually replies, "I love it" and all is well in the land of stamps and cats but soon the honeymoon ends and I begin to find fault. It starts out small with doubts about the town or little aspects of the property I don't like then I start to dislike the layout of the house and soon I cast this dismal dwelling aside and I am back on the hunt for the "one." I start to feel like I am missing out on some amazing property that can trump (remember when this word had only one meaning) any of the houses I find if I only hold out long enough. Double sigh. 



Now, a rational person would say something about how of course I should be picky, this is going to be our first home together and the place we plan to live for many years so I shouldn't settle which are both fair and valid points. The issue is that I've gone beyond rational thinking and have moved into the realm of uber (once again this word used to have a different meaning) crazy where nothing is good enough and I must have a perfect home. Triple sigh! 

(Here's a dirty picture of a banana for those who've made it this far.)

So, what is the solution? Two days ago we contacted a Realtor and started the inquiry process for one of the homes we both like. Ever since I've been doubting our decision and I've begun the fault finding process. Chris very innocently pointed out yesterday in a joking tone that I'll never be done looking and that was the straw for me. I realized in that moment that the only way to break this cycle is to simply say this home is good enough and that is good enough for me. I don't need perfection and maybe our beautiful new house will be just like me, perfectly imperfect. 

The search is over.

-Steph 

1 comment:

  1. Are you going to visit NB before you start with offers etc.?

    The search isn't really over, is it?

    ReplyDelete