Howdy, strangers!
Been awhile! Howzit hangin'?
Sorry I've been a negligent blogger. I've been a bit distracted lately. But, hey, I'm back! Back again! Davey's back...tell a friend!
♫♪Guess who's back...guess who's back...guess who's back...♫♪
Sorry, sorry...I'll behave.
So, for those of you keeping score at home, I fired up this Emblogification Capture Device waaaaay back in April of 2010 to help me through a rough patch. I'd just left a lucrative, but soul-destroying, job that was making me feel as if I was dying inside and frittering my time away while doing it. Armed with a nest egg of "fuck you" money, I quit that pointless toil and struck out on my own in a GRAND EXPERIMENT.
At that time, I was feeling pretty sanguine about my future. Over the next four years, I used this space to develop my writing and editing skills, cheer-lead the publication of my first novel, explore opportunities in the local film community and generally keep my morale up. The end goal of this GRAND EXPERIMENT was always the same: to get paid to write and / or edit.
Slowly but surely opportunities presented themselves to me. In 2013, I started a part-time job that was incredibly fulfilling, but also woefully non-lucrative. In 2016, I started to get freelance writing gigs and, since then, I've written over forty articles for a variety of sources. Then, in May of 2019, I became a staff editor for a small publishing house in Ontario.
With that, I considered the mission of Ye Olde Emblogification Capture Device to be largely complete. This blog went to fallow and I switched my focus to more immediate things that. Like y'know, making money.
Behind the scenes, the thing that really sustained me during this GRAND EXPERIMENT was my miraculous living situation. For over twenty-five years, I've lived in the same place and, during that time, it became a magical realm frozen in time. As a model tenant, the price for my two bedroom apartment never rose above $840.00 a month.
When I first moved in there, it was a quiet little place, mainly inhabited by senior citizens. In the mid 90's I fled a louder, noisier chicken coop of a building and put my best foot forward to move into my current place. I actually had to undergo an interview with the family who owned the building back then and, to ensure a good impression, I dressed up and constantly underscored much how I wanted a "quiet place to live."
"Welp, the loudest it ever gets here is if a card game gets out of hand," the building owner at the time told me, without a hint of irony.
The place was absolutely lovely for many years. I remember my parents first coming to visit me and they legit though I was the sole tenant in the entire complex. My cute octogenarians neighbors, clad exclusively in ployester slacks, sweater vests and dresses, would decorate the common areas for every occasion and host Christmas and Easter parties with their doors thrown wide open.
But, as we all know, nothing good ever lasts. About twelve years ago, the building was sold to a new owner and, as the more respectable senior residents died off, things slowly started to go downhill. Since then, we've had to contend with mice, silverfish, pot / cigarette smoke and a wall that leaks like a sieve whenever it's hit by direct rain.
It's hard to believe, but there was a period of time, circa 2012-2020 when renters held all the cards in Halifax. Our building had a slew of vacant units, which I think the owner was desperate to pack with bodies, so long as they could sit upright and had a body temperature of 37 degrees. As a result, the complexion of the building changed from "ersatz seniors home" to "borderline flophouse."
Oh, the stories I could tell. How about time the mail-order bride who lived across from me pounded on my door in the middle of the night seeking asylum from the crusty old fuck who requisitioned her? How about the time six months worth of my checks were stolen from the lobby suggestion box by a resident dirtbag? This dumb fuck then proceeded to cash all of them at once, resulting in five of the checks bouncing around town like little rubber balls.
Oh, then there was the sedentary piece of shit who took it upon himself to single-handedly lower the property values by sitting on his porch all day and night, regardless of season, smoking dope and playing video games through the patio door? Thanks to this charming prick, our parking lot would often become a late night arena for verbal sparring matches between Mr. Charisma and some jobber he'd clearly fucked over in a drug deal. I remember coming home late one night from a friends place and I couldn't even get back into the buildings because the cops had cordoned off the entire street due the latest dispute instigated by this asshole.
Sadly, there's gonna be lot more about this fucking organ donor coming in future entries. Stay tuned.
Regardless of how bad things got, I'd always tell myself that things could be worse. Especially when I'd talk to my 20-something co-workers about rent, and they told me that they were paying anywhere from $800.00 to $1200.00 a month...often just for a single room. The implication of this never failed to chill me to the bone.
Holdupaminit! I'm picking up on your psychic signals, Dear Reader. I can actually hear you asking: why didn't you do what everyone else your age did and buy a house? Welp, that ain't easy when your first job abruptly vanishes and the subsequent fire you were forced to leap into was so stressful and / or rage inducing that you thought about walking off the job every hour of every day?
Oh, and, spoiler alert, don't even try and approach a mortgage broker unless you're working full time. They might be able to get you into a house but your rates will be so ridiculous it'll be the equivalent of highway robbery.
When COVID hit in January of 2020, I really started to worry. What if I was forced out of this place by some sort of calamity beyond my control? I'd be lucky to find any place, let alone a spot where the rent was vaguely comparable. If my rent suddenly jumped, the GRAND EXPERIMENT would come to a screeching halt.
This paranoia struck me so badly one day during the lockdown that I remember sitting in my room looking around at forty years worth of collectible detritus and thinking: 'What the fuck would I do if this place catches on fire?'
Looking back on it, I'm reminded of folks who live in some tropical paradise, tentatively looking out across the distant horizon at a wall of dark clouds bearing down on them. What do you do when a storm is coming and you don't know where to go or what to do?
Well, back on July 12'th 2022...I actually found out.
NEXT UP: Have you ever wanted to know what its like to wake up from a dead sleep at 2 am with someone pounding on your door and telling you that your building's on fire? For the record, I don't recommend it.
EPIC: Can anyone please confirm that this place is as great as this article seems to indicate?
FAIL: Grim, grim stuff right here.
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