Subes for life!

House-sitting — FTW? Or ….?

I’m on the fence with this one. It’s a bit of a cliche for VLers to jump at the chance to house-sit after being on the road for a while. My guess is that being a VLer is similar to being a full-time world-traveler or backpacker — everything you can carry is with you, you’re always on the move, you’re never fully situated in one place, and so on.

It’s fun, but demanding.

And so, when offered a chance to house-sit, I immediately accepted.

I savored the thought of having a full kitchen, laundry, cold and hot running water, free internet, and unlimited power to keep the essential electronics running. And, man, did I take over the house. I did all the laundry and dishes and hot showers and cooking and lounging that one could cram in to a week. I had a laptop setup, my Linux workstation setup, all my external drives running, all my backups crunching away, all my big downloads and uploads churning through the bits and bytes.

The only real problem I found was that this place was a bit too stylish for my tastes. Plenty of sunlight, but no way to tamp it so one could see the screen and work on the comp. A six-burner stove, but a paucity of knives or pans or utensils. Chemex coffee maker, but no good way to clean it or keep the coffee warm. Full pantry, but not the kinds of things I would stock. No paper towels. No pot scrubber. No vacuum.

Everything looked nice and was modern and gleaming and shiny and chrome, but the sleek chairs were uncomfortable and the lighting was overdesigned and the windows were so eco they wouldn’t even open for fresh air.

As it turned out, it was more style, less substance.

I didn’t heart it.

Like, WT(holy)F, people? How do you live this way? Just fine, they might say. It works for them. They chose what they needed and that’s what they have. And, they don’t care what some chump off the street thinks.

I’ll leave it for you to consider: is form more important than function? The other way around? Equilibrium between the two? It seems to me that the more simple one lives, more emphasis on function occurs naturally. If you only own one shirt, it is your sleep shirt and your work shirt and your dress shirt and the shirt off your back you give to the homeless guy without a shirt.

You get the picture. People live different ways.

And you know what? This same family offered another house-sit stint a week or two later, and I gladly accepted it again for all the same reasons as the first time around and I promptly identified all the same “problems” as the first time around, and I promised myself I’d accept another offer just like all the other times around. Because, house-sitting is kinda cool. And fun. And, different.

It’s just that some people are just never happy, I guess ….

See you on the road! [Or, at your house?]