Seriously

This has been the major issue in my life since forever - deferred happiness. Gaslighted down the road further each day for the benefit of others and to the detriment of my own life and happiness. This upcoming move, despite losing the garage, is part of an effort to get into a position where even a crappy job is sufficient, so perhaps a decent work/life balance can be achieved. A sort of spritual pulling one's self up by one's own bootstraps....

Been through it myself the past couple of years buddy. It can be tough, no doubt, but theres no putting a price on peace of mind and your mental happiness. It’s not about ‘stuff’ - and there’s always another way if you’re willing to look for it. All the very best to you!
 
Duly noted. Pacific Northwest is cold, rainy, and taxed like NJ. Taxes here in AZ are a lot lower.
Tax situation as far as percentages is not so bad (although state legislature is always trying to make it worse, most recently they succeeded in driving Boeing out of the state the second time; I bet they’ll take another crack at the state income tax this year, under the auspices of “COVID recovery” this time). It’s just that with Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Facebook presence the real estate prices are way up there in the unreasonable stratosphere. Not quite NorCal levels, but it’s getting there. There’s no way I’d pay $1.4M for my house today, yet that’s purportedly what people are paying. A wooden box shouldn’t cost this much, nor should a 10k sqft plot of land it sits on, yet here we are. And it rains 6 months in any given year. The forecast is, I kid you not, that it’ll start raining tomorrow again, and rains usually end by 4th of July. Then you get 2-3 months of a reprieve. I’ll be buying a property later this year somewhere south (TX or FL). I’d actually take a pay cut to work somewhere where it’s not raining for months on end, but I don’t even have to cut my billing rate, since there’s not a lot of my skill set available for hire. Though finding new clients might be problematic from there. A lot of that is still localized.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
While admirable, you will ALWAYS need a vacation. Just like at pro musicians. To us they're living the dream life. And yet to them it has become a job. And doing other things now becomes the fun thing to do. Then again there are always exceptions. I know Mick Fleetwood once said he loves nothing more then coming off an airplane, check in a hotel and knowing there will be a gig that evening.
0B19D0B6-8C5E-4BE1-B9D0-5937186AD5E0.jpeg
 
Happiness, by the way, is a choice, to a very large extent. “We can despair that rose bushes have thorns, or we can rejoice that thorny bushes have roses”, or something to that effect. Ive found that if I’m mindful of this, I tend to be a lot happier overall. There’s really no objective reason for me to be unhappy. The rest is what I make it.
 
Happiness, by the way, is a choice, to a very large extent. “We can despair that rose bushes have thorns, or we can rejoice that thorny bushes have roses”, or something to that effect. Ive found that if I’m mindful of this, I tend to be a lot happier overall. There’s really no objective reason for me to be unhappy. The rest is what I make it.
Bingo.
 
Duly noted. Pacific Northwest is cold, rainy, and taxed like NJ. Taxes here in AZ are a lot lower.

In some cases, it's not really the tax rate that's the problem, but that you're paying taxes on a really expensive home. I hava friends that moved to Texas, and were complaining about their property taxes there. They were still lower than what they were paying in California overall, but seems high. And of course in CA, your taxes are sort of locked if you don't move, so if you bought 20 years ago, you could be paying $160/mo for taxes next door to someone paying $900/mo.
 
Back
Top Bottom