Sold my first house

I just sold my first house…

Feels like the end of an era.

I lived in that house for 10 years then rented it out five years ago.

I have a lot of memories in there.

I bought that house to be walking distance to Lansdowne skate park, and driving distance from all of the places I taught yoga.

Lansdowne is one of the oldest concrete skate parks in the world.

That place is legendary.

I was a guard on duty there for a little while. Watched the kids. filled out waivers and rode my skateboard. Made a lot of friends.

A lot of this house is also tangled up in memories of a woman that I fell in love with, got engaged to, moved her into my house, and it all went to shit.

Discovered she had severe bipolar disorder.

It is super painful seeing a person you love being put in a straight jacket and hauled off to an institution. Many people with these disorders can be brilliant and charming and turn around and be completely psycho.

The sex was amazing.

That woman was like heroin to me. So good, but so destructive.

Renting out the house was lucrative for a little while and then just became too stressful.

I suppose I am lucky.

This project was the first thing in my life that I lost serious sleep over.

I am glad to have the experience of selling a property.

That seemed like a very scary thing.

I wanted to move past that fear and experience the process of selling real estate. I worried a lot about it. Now the next property I sell will be easier.

The money that I earned from the sale I will put towards my trucking career. I am making wicked good money driving tankers. The trucking money I will funnel towards my creative pursuits, art, music, skateboarding, internet marketing, and more real estate.

Anyways I am further distancing myself from Baltimore. I still have a lot of really wonderful friends there and will visit the city, but selling this property cuts major psychic ties. I still have another property in Baltimore with very good tenants. That rental property does not keep me up at night so I will keep it for now. I intend to buy properties in Chattanooga and a lot of other cool cities around the country. One idea is to just invest in properties in cities that have strong musical heritage. Nashville New Orleans Chicago Memphis Austin etc...

For the first few days after selling the property I kind of felt in shock. Spent a few days unpacking emotions. Now I am settling into a certain satisfaction. There is certain joy in having a financial safety net that I never knew when I was a “starving artist.” It’s funny, back then, the thought never occurred to me to save money… To even earn decent money… Honestly I never really thought about money at all. I just thought about improving my crafts.

I have rewired my brain about money and know that it is a useful tool for all my projects.