An Update on my Housing Situation - Minimalism vs. Dreaming Big

https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/vincentnijman/Eq5D71rTrgeHb48sgxHRuvRMamorLxvFy53ZRhaTDACu66mfRCeoXtTaLgWdGUtfryJ
#### Yesterday morning, my younger sister who lives in The Netherlands, asked me ( living in Portugal ) on the family app: > Vin, how much longer can you stay in your current place and what will be your next step? **FYI:** **I'm house sitting a friend's place, since mid December and can stay here until they move in. Meanwhile my own house has been for sale since November but I already left it around September.** I replied as follows: > Probably till the mid of April. >Not sure yet what I'll do afterward. Camping till my house has been sold and not buying anything ( new ) until I'm crypto rich. Something like that. > And if it become possible, once again, I might travel some too. Then my mom suggested: >You could still live in your house, right? I miss the view... Here's the view she's talking about and this was taken on a rainy day and doesn't come close to the actual view:

https://images.hive.blog/0x0/https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/vincentnijman/HgctVTYv-image.png I feel that she mainly misses that little tree, at the right. I shared a lot of pics of the sunset from there, usually including that tree. My parents and siblings ( those in The Netherlands ) loved to receive those sunset snaps, but just that view alone wasn't enough for me to feel at home there. I often felt pretty alone and depression was lurking in the shadows, waiting for a chance to overpower me. https://images.hive.blog/0x0/https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/vincentnijman/HgctVTYv-image.png In Monte Frio ( Portuguese for cold mountain ) I often felt like this hermit crab:

*A digital version of this piece, one of my personal favorites, is for sale in my NFT showroom gallery [here](https://nftshowroom.com/vincentnijman/gallery/vincentnijman_the-story-of-hypersensitivosaurus_hermit-the-crab)* https://images.hive.blog/0x0/https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/vincentnijman/HgctVTYv-image.png I responded to my mom's question - why I wouldn't go back to my house? - with: > I can't bear it there. Recipe for depression. Believe me, I tried. I tried for two years to live in that beautiful mountain hamlet with an amazing view ( and feel at home there ) but it was already depressing enough before *The Thing* changed the world. Now it's 10x worse. The only restaurant closed down last September. There's hardly any people, they are all old and scared. If I'm in Monte Frio, I feel a strong urge to lock myself up in my house and that's not a healthy thing to do ( I love to spend time outdoor ). It's too big a challenge to feel good there, even though I love a good challenge. I need more of a community and it seems like that is to be found around the place where I'm right now and where my twin sister is at. No matter how much I need and cherish my alone time, I need a healthy balance between that and being social ( I love to talk and I'm single ) and I couldn't find that in Monte Frio. Not having transport - aside from my strong legs - didn't help much either. https://images.hive.blog/0x0/https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/vincentnijman/HgctVTYv-image.png #### Then, my twin sister, who I was about to visit ( she lives 5km away from the place I'm currently at and I had literally just closed the door behind me to walk to her place ) joined in on the group chat: > This is the house Vin is talking about ( and she threw in a link to the FOR SALE ad ) I just about knew that it was for sale but I didn't know much more than that. Then things started to become exciting, gears started to turn and my future vision started to morph, once again. My Dutch sister replied: > That looks good, Vin. >just as big as our house ( she has a husband and two kids and lives in a pretty big bungalow ) I laughed. And my twin sister continued: > It's a very cool house with a fantastic view over the valley. That's what I reckoned ( as it's placed on a hill above my current location and the vista is already pretty sweet from here. I added ( semi jokingly ): >Funny enough I''m tending toward minimalism. Perhaps this can become my second house. ( I meant to say that I would get myself a smaller place or a caravan some place else. This might become a summer house, source of passive income ) #### We have to dream big, right? And believe me, it's all possible ( and more realistically so, since I got into crypto currency ). It's all a matter of timing, perhaps some luck and ( growth ) mindset.
My younger sister, replied to my minimalist joke with the following words: > What has this house to do with minimalism? This was countered by a joke of my twin sis ( we joke a lot in our family ): > ( the minimalism refers to the fact ) that the sellers want to have at least 120k *This was a word play on the Dutch word minimal(ism). 'Minimaal' means at least.* https://images.hive.blog/0x0/https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/vincentnijman/HgctVTYv-image.png I will talk some more about the money aspect later but let's say that this house is for sale for a price that is about 2.5 to 3 times higher than what I expect to sell my own house for and I don't have a lot of savings. I replied to my younger sister that that wasn't what I meant. That it was a joke. I guess I didn't even know what I was thinking myself, at that moment. It intrigues me how fast things can change, almost as if it's meant to be. and I responed with a "Hahaha" to my twin sister's joke. Right at that moment, I was walking past my possible future house ( on the hill ), on my way to my twin sister's land, I snapped two pics of the house and shared them in the chat. Here they are:

https://images.hive.blog/0x0/https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/vincentnijman/HgctVTYv-image.png **TO BE CONTINUED...**
Originally posted here: https://hive.blog/hive-120078/@vincentnijman/an-update-on-my-housing-situation-minimalism-vs-dreaming-big