Every time I visit NYC, I have a slight desire to live there.  It's really the center of the universe.  No other place on earth compares to it.  It literally has anything and everything.  Whatever you could ever possibly want to do, you could do it in the city.  Whatever you want to see, experience, taste, etc., you can do it in the city.  I'm thankful I went to school in Hoboken, where the city was always just a quick train ride away.  Although I didn't hang out there all the time, I went enough to learn my way around and experience some great things. 

But there's this other part of me (the bigger part) that wants to live in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothingness.  No buildings.  No coffee shops.  No subways.  No people.  This is the part of me that's won most of the battles up to this point.  It's not because "that's all I've ever known".  I've experienced enough of big city life, small city life, big town life, and small town life to know which one I like the best. 

The problem with living in the city is that it's prohibitively expensive.  To make it non-prohibitive, you have to make substantial cuts in your quality of life.  Or get a damn good job.  A closet-sized basement apartment will cost about $2000 per month, and that's not a cut I'm willing to make. 

There's also the issue of downsizing from a house in rural New Jersey to an apartment in NYC:  There's no need for quite a few objects, including a lawn mower, weed whacker, power tools, etc. 

So I think I've come up with a compromise:  Two separate dwellings (and a job with double the income).  I like where I live right now.  I take pleasure in the small joys of [minimal] land ownership.  But I also like visiting the city and spending the night.  I would be ok with a closet-sized basement apartment as long as I could quickly and easily get out of there and back into something a little roomier and nicer.  Plus, if the closet-sized basement apartment isn't the primary residence, it doesn't need to be quite as nice or have any/many amenities.  All you really need is a bed and a bathroom.  Everything else can be easily found and bought around the city. #psychology