Lately I have had such a case of wanting to keep up with the Jones. It just seems like all my friends are buying home and homesteads, getting land, moving out to country and raising stock and families. Then I follow all these off-grid and homesteading groups on Facebook, and my feed is constantly filled with pictures of cattle and hogs, vast open spaces out west, Alaska, the true west and mid-west.

At one level, I feel like I am getting older and not making much progress. It seems like I’m still in my miserable little apartment, which is so cold and dirty, worn out and broken, but I like the location. I like the library and park, and choosing to go without wired internet. I am dropping the hotspot plan as soon as I go back to working downtown and the library re-opens for in-person use.

But at the same time, I totaled up this evening the money I’m investing and saving on a weekly basis, and while it looks relatively small on any one account, it does add up when you add up the various accounts, especially over time. But it’s not where I need to be today, although I probably could put down a pretty good down payment or even buy a modest house, but that would require me to sell of many of my investments and deplete a lot of my savings.

I just don’t want to live the suburbanite life, with the big screen televisions, the status symbols of the SUV or hybrid car, the chemically-fertilized lawn, the neighbors right next store. And the plastic! I’d rather die then live in a house with vinyl siding and two car garage. My heart is not in suburbia, it’s in the open country, some of the wild places I’ve explored and even more so the places I’ve read about and seen on the Youtube. The small towns that smell like silage and cow shit, the farm country, the ranches and vast mountains out west. Or even the small-towns like you might find in many parts of New York in a more subdued fashion. Upstate New York is fine, but it’s expensive and it’s a land of red tape and waste.

Some of my friends and colleagues took the small leap, buying land out in country, and still commuting back to Albany-area for work. It’s a lot of driving, and much of the rural land around here, while rural is far more urbanized and regulated then what you might find in the wilds of West Virginia, Missouri or Idaho. Land prices are pretty high, especially for acreage, and there are still a lot of codes to be followed. Yes, I’ve been to places like the Southern Tier and the Black River Valley, or far reaches of North Country, but even the most remote and wild small town in New York isn’t like so much of world I’ve been learning and reading about.

I really hate to sign my new lease and the commitment it brings at the higher price for the next year, but I can’t make the numbers work to move. I’d love to own land, but it’s expensive locally, and I don’t really have enough money to buy what I want or would need outright. I sure like having the bus I can take to work downtown, the library, park, and wildlife observation grounds a short walk from home. And honestly, I don’t really want to spend my whole life in Upstate New York, when I’ve seen there are other places in the world and other places. But I feel like re-upping my lease is just kicking the can down the road — sure I have fun traveling now — but I also feel like I’m making little progress compared to what my friends and colleagues are.