Articles
Friday, 31 March 2006
Housesitting
Dorothy Segovia
[Published in HopeDance]
$650 a month to hear my neighbors throwing dishes and screaming or throwing parties and yelling: I knew I had to find another way to live. First off, I felt that the juju of doling out my dough in a wave of pissosity wasn’t benefiting my future money karma. Secondly, the studio I was living in wasn’t worth $650 per month – and that’s what hurt the most.
So I surrendered.
Surrendering meant different things. It meant letting go of resistance. I had been resisting my feelings of anger in paying too much for much too little. Essentially I was paying by the month for what I didn’t want. I didn’t want screaming meemies in my yard. I didn’t want to struggle for the rent. I didn’t want to feel like a failure as a person in the community - renter, followed by homeowner. With the rising cost of housing in SLO and Santa Barbara counties, homeowner only launches the voice of my powerful Inner Critic.
“You should have started saving years earlier. You should have stuck with that very straight and very boring job. You’ll never be a homeowner. What’s going to happen to you?”
But most of all, surrendering meant freedom.
One day, I was spouting off my list of don’t wants to a gal pal on the phone, “I don’t even want to be here in this county,” I wailed. “I’m trying to get to Santa Barbara!”
What are your options?”
“Well, house-sitting!” I sputtered. “I think I’ll try house-sitting! There’s gotta be some rich people in Santa Barbara who need someone like me!”
I have this Gemini, now-moving-this-way quality about myself. I believe that out of the chaos of what I loathe is the serenity of what I love. In her hilarious book, “Excuse Me, Your Life Is Waiting!” Lynn Grabhorn expands on the spiritual truth that what we focus on expands. Now that I knew what I didn’t want it was time to claim what I did want.
A private house with a garden, a big cooking kitchen, a compost, cable TV, ocean, a private office, Santa Barbara.
Grabhorn explains that once you decide on What you want, let go of How you are going to get it.
We live in a very How society. That’s how we end up working jobs we don’t want for houses that own us. The next time you catch yourself daydreaming, stop a moment and check out what your body is feeling. You’ll notice that you are more open, expanded. This open heart is the key to attracting the positive ‘What you want’ in life circumstances. That is, when you are feeling open then you are open.
Claiming what you want is recognizing an open door. My favorite thing about myself is that I am brave enough and resilient enough to walk through open doors.
Of course, Anne, the gal pal I was wailing to later called and asked me to house sit for three months while she went to England.
Her lovely three-bedroom house had a cooking kitchen, garden with compost, private office, cable TV and a fireplace. As a bonus, there was a storage shed out back to keep my crap.
The qualities of a house-sitter include being flexible, responsible, adventurous, creative and respectful. The main reason you are house sitting is because you are being trusted with something precious: someone else’s space. They expect you to enjoy and maintain their home. Think of it as being a working guest.
Of course I later found a care taking job in Santa Barbara for rich people that ultimately resulted in chaos, then naming what I don’t want, then surrendering, then an open door. (I forgot that I was looking for house sitting, not people sitting.)
If you are willing to stay the house sitting course: if you are willing to lighten your load and step onto the path of being the kind of house guest that gets to open other peoples medicine cabinets, then maybe the house sitting life is something you want.
End