WHAT MAKES YOU LIVE LIKE THAT?

Suppose you suddenly had no family, lover or relatives. You still have the same financial problems, and unfortunately the same boss. Are you living where you want to in a house that you love?

Now switch it up. Take back your loved ones and give up the job location, but no change to your finances (dammit!) Now where do you live?

The pressures of these two major forces in your life will dramatically influence the decision of where you live and what you live in (within the same paypacket.) It is an important exercise to think through for yourself because trying to understand why you are where you are is so difficult and so important at the same time. It keeps coming up again and again as you reflect on the possibilities. Deciphering the complexity of why often leads to a stalemate of status quo and can be a dangerous ingredient to your suicidal outlook. However having a confident grasp on that same position of your life can bring satisfaction and inspiration to millions.

Sure, no partner likes being considered a potential anchor on your life, especially wives they're always sensitive with that one, but they're probably not the anchor, you are. For how many times have you balanced these issues separately and clearly in your mind without entering some sort of blame game that others are.  Your job and your family each take turns in the blame-go-round non-amusement ride in your head and your face wears a scowling appearance that makes others want to pour filth down the back of your shirt.

So what are the differences you ask?

THE JOB

Unless you were born into some form of wealth the hovers in celestial orbit around the rest of us ants you are required to work. If you're not you are a) infirm old or incredibly ugly , b) prohibited by law or c)  living off of me. Item C'rs see below.

I don't mind paying into a social welfare system. In fact I move countries if there isn't one installed. Not everyone can afford life like the other 80% of us can, and the truth is we've got more then we need. But if you think you've figured out a clever way to buck the system and get paid by lying about being an A or B person then you're screwing us all. But most of all your stealing from those that need it most, not from those that earned the money. How do you feel now knowing your stealing from orphans. Effectively removing any hope of getting a used teddy bear at Christmas and slapping their half eaten bread roll out of their skinny cold hands. Luckily I've managed to start fixing this situation by inventing a food dye that glows fuscia in your iris under the right lighting. Social welfare desks are having these installed all over the country as we speak to weed out the purple eyes of our society. Its not perfect technology yet so the effects are permanent. Good for you.

So if you're working, you most likely have some wonderful stories to tell about the dysfunctional office or factory environment you spend 3/4 of your life in. You'll have a charming boss, or more then likely these days, bosses, who has more control over your bodily functions then you do. But the most significant influence to your home is not the long lasting emotional scars you carry in your briefcase, its the location of your work and time spent there.

My theory is the distance from your house to your job, multiplied by the time to commute is inversely proportional to the enjoyment of your home. Considering you spend more of your daily life in the confines of your ___________ (insert: car, bus, train, office, desk, station or chicken coop) then you do resting on the softness of your couch, then it goes without saying that proximity to your office is priority. With this in mind your luck at landing that swanky mid-level management rat hole analysis position will dictate where you can now live, and the amount of care you place into your homestead. If you have a stay at home partner then you're more likely to be told what to do at your home... Just like work but better because everyone loves being told what to do at home, too. Which brings us to the other side of the equation:

THE FAMILY

Those of us who have been lucky enough to photocopy ourselves into small, hard to find people with magnified personalities and voices know the importance of having a good home for the family. By good I mean having a roof, lockable doors, internal plumbing and room for a fridge and microwave. Everything else is a luxury that goes beyond the needs of a family. Yet we feel persecuted if we don't have the number of bedrooms and toilets equal the house inhabitants, stone benchtops, foreign appliances, separate rooms for clothing and toys and a TV room with a 2 storey Imax screen.

The family unit brings with it an interesting compounding dilemma in the demands that develop as the dependents get bigger. So where you once thought how important it was to hear the baby from the lounge, now becomes an exercise in training the brain to match the competing sounds of the TV and music with the moving lips on the screen. Kids get bigger, houses get smaller and you stay the same size but reduce in relevance. Space is a commodity of peace and tranquillity.  Hence the McMansion craze when many of us were given other peoples money for free. However, the lessened learned from this supersizing was not that other peoples money isn't free, its that all that extra space now needs to be fucking cleaned! More space = more crap your family is happy to leave lying around everywhere. So find that balance that forces clever storage and reduces your time bent over picking up shit.

A families influence doesn't stop at the front door. Beyond the safety of home where you prefer to have them locked 'safely' away, hidden from the neighbours is your rolling green lawns of immaculate conception that kids need for fun, but rarely use. Circle this expanse with an aesthetically pleasing stockade fence and you've got yourself a great breeding ground for endless hours of spare time landscaping. Or, for some, a foreign employment sanctuary.

The neighbourhood comes into focus just before the mother gets that sparkle in her eye. Suddenly the traffic, hospital, schools, neighbours and parks take on an order if importance unparalleled by the previous interests in cafes, restaurants, pubs, clubs, shops, and gyms.  For those 13 years of a child's life, your life is subservient to the umbilical cord connection of the local school. Nobody wants to raise a loser with no friends so it must be firmly established that your children's school friends are the most important protection between your child having a successful adult life and roaming the earth a wandering soul in a hobo uniform. Or something similar of that nature. 4 OUT OF 5 professional psychologists agree.

But wait a minute. Where do I fit I, you ask?  I'm the important one who working and providing. I deserve freedom of choice. I could have been somebody, somewhere doing something. Now all I got is this shack filled with hungry mouths, a shitty job, and a traffic jam.

Well, guess what, you did decide and you are somewhere but your doing little about it. And you continue to do so with each bleary eyed morning.

Your home is the semblance of your self, where your lives connect and collide. The attention given to the house you live in pays back into the vestige of your happiness. If your home satisfies the demands created by the decisions made towards your job and your family you achieve a state of equilibrium from which additional investment leads to the enhancement of your sanctuary, sense of achievement and confidence in the choices you've made.

-BTB