20190608.0430

I have been reasonably good at posting on 8 June, having done so in 2011, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018. The 2011 post was a brief one marking my parents' thirtieth anniversary then just past. The 2014 noted the birth of a cousin and work then in progress; the latter parts of it seem quaint to me now, particularly those discussing what was then my "professional" website. (I like to think that matters have improved somewhat since then in that regard; the website where I conduct my professional activities now looks better, and I have used it to learn a bit better how to design and code webpages. I admit I'm not as up as I ought to be, though.) The 2015 was a domestic report, noting small things I had done around Sherwood Cottage to make it a bit more livable. And the last three have been bits of verse, in context or not, that do not suggest themselves to me for analysis quite at the moment.
The domestic piece, though, seems to speak to me at the moment. Now, as then, my family and I rent the place where we live, paying someone else for the privilege of staying in a place we pay enough to be able to buy--if we can but get a down payment put together. The demands of daily life keep us from being able to do that; I admit that there are expenses we could trim slightly, but only slightly, and even when we do so, something crops up that keeps us from keeping much money back for very long. We are making progress, though it is slow, and there are times I do not think I'll ever be able to catch up to where I have been and where I probably need to be again.
Knowing that where we live is not ours, that it could be taken away at most any time (I pay the rent on time, but our landlord is not a young man, and I do not know if his successor will be as decent as he is) does not much motivate me to invest in making things better. I did not do much of it at Sherwood Cottage; what I did was more to reduce my utility costs than anything else. (It had some effect in that line, which I appreciated.) My family and I have done more where we live now, admittedly; Sherwood Cottage and the city in which it stands were never going to be forever homes for us, but the Hill Country town where I live now and where I grew up may well be. Knowing that we are more likely to stay here encourages making even things that are not mine better; I'll be using them longer, so I ought to involve myself in them more.
Still, I know that anything I do to the structure will stay where I put it, even though I will not stay where I put it. No small part of me chafes at the idea of putting my time, effort, and money into things that make others' investments more valuable but do not improve my own. It is a selfish attitude, perhaps, but I note that such selfishness is lauded as thrift in landlords and business owners. I want to wonder why the descriptors change when they are applied to individuals, but I already know that the answer is a de facto caste system--and that I am not at so exalted a rank as to admit of virtuous greed.