I don’t know

Space is something everyone in San Francisco is looking for more of. It costs so much here that we don’t generally have much of it to live in (let alone for storing our stuff). You might be surprised what a person can do with a room here.

I read a post recently about how a real estate agent advised home buyers to choose a house in which they’d use every room every day. I laughed so hard when I read that, that I choked on a gulp of water. Space is at such a premium here that there isn’t a square foot I haven’t agonized over. We sleep in what is supposed to be our living room, and eat in a water damaged room behind our kitchen so that our proper “dining room” can be the living room. We use every single square inch of space in our house every day. The idea that an entire room might not be taken advantage of on a daily basis is kind of baffling.

Then I thought about moving downstairs and making it our “master suite.” If the kitchen downstairs didn’t have the stairs we going to build into it, we wouldn’t use that room. It will basically be a stairway when we’re living in the entire house (but we want to keep some kitchen functionality so that it could once again serve as a separate unit if our kids, or parents, want to live down there some day). And will we really use the all of that “master suite” every day? Is sleeping in a room every night enough to say we “use it”?

My son had his first friend over to spend the night this weekend and at 6:30am on Sunday (so really, 5:30am as far as my body was concerned) he and his friend tiptoed loudly into the living room to turn on the Switch. At that point the idea of sleeping downstairs was amazing, but those mornings are random and rare. Does that experience mean we need it?

I’ve been trying to think a lot about what I love about my house and what I don’t (the parts I have control over, not the over all quality or aesthetic of the actual house). When we move the rooms around I want the layout to be well thought out and purposeful. I spend a lot of time considering different options, and not just because it’s an easy escape from the day to day – I want to be aware of how much power I really have in crafting a space I love, and to exercise that control whenever possible.

That purposeful eye has been trained on my days as well. What in my schedule serves me? What could, or should, be cast aside? This weekend we got an email explaining that our dojo is closing for two weeks in accordance with the city’s recommendation that all non-essential gatherings of more than 50 people be cancelled. Since there is even more person-to-person contact at the dojo than at most “gatherings,” they really felt they should comply and so now we have two weeks without martial arts practice. I have to admit, my first reaction was relief. That is 4-6 classes (between me and my son) I won’t have to maneuver into my schedule this week or next week. I was mostly glad to get a break.

Those moments make me think a lot about what I really value in my life. The thing is, martial arts brings a level of meaning that I don’t have in a lot of other areas of my life. I am learning so much and it feels great to stretch my brain and body to the brink a couple of times a week. It’s also stressful to arrange pick up and childcare on those days – to negotiate the time away from family. I really do feel that my martial arts practice enriches my life and increases my overall well being, so why am I relieved when it’s non-voluntarily taken away from me?

I wonder about these things a lot. I read enough about minimalism that I’m constantly nudged to look at my life more purposefully, but I still struggle for clarity when I think about what is worth my energy and commitment and what I should jettison (both with things and commitments). I’m thinking about it at work a lot too. What do I really want to accomplish in my classroom? What do I want my students walking away with every day? Here again the end goal can feel like it conflicts with the day to day. I want them to succeed in Spanish II as freshman (if that is their choice) so they need to know how complete rote grammar activities accurately, but I don’t want to spend a lot of time on that kind of work in my classroom (and I certainly don’t want to score it). How do I meet these seemingly conflicting goals?

How do I train at the dojo in a way that feels satisfying, without feeling like my evenings are crammed too full with commitments?

How do I organize my house so that my family has adequate space to gather, and to decompress?

A friend from the east coast was recently in town and we spend the evening together. She is originally from the area and her family still lives here, so I sometimes ask her if she thinks she’ll ever be back. She used to be sure that some day she would be, but this time when I asked she said she didn’t think so. She likes how far her money stretches where she is. She doesn’t think she’ll ever move back to the Bay Area or the big city where she spent her mid-20s – she just doesn’t value the area enough for her money to stretch so thin. My friend earns 135% of what I do, and her husband surely earns at least as much more than my husband does. They live in a house that is three times bigger than ours and costs them half as much. When I think about how much more money she must have than me, just sitting in her back account, or being siphoned into 529s for her kids, I wonder why we stay here, where our mortgage devours such a massive percentage of our monthly take home pay. I can list off the reasons we live here with ease, because I repeat them to myself almost every day, but I’m not sure if any of it means anything. I’m also not sure that having all that money to put aside means anything either. That is my point – I don’t know.

I wonder sometimes if I ever will know, at least for me. I recognize that I spent my 20s and 30s sprinting through life with little thought to the choices I made and how they affected my overall well being, so I suppose asking the questions is a good place to start. Maybe some day I’ll have the answers.