The Magical Thinking Train

So I just finished the ninth chapter of my memoir, which is now at 20,279 words. The last few chapters have gone pretty quickly, since they hewed closely to my blog posts of that time in my life. We have arrived in San Francisco and fought the first skirmishes to find adequate -- if expensive -- housing and childcare. Although this memoir braids together my personal experiences and the broader economic events of 2007-2008, the last few chapters have been all me all the time. I did manage to tuck in some broader context, specifically addressing our landlord company's appalling business model and the challenges confronting San Francisco families. But basically the last few chapters have watched me ricochet from weird situation to weird situation, gibbering madly all the while. I swear, if this book ever gets published, my readers will probably throw this book across the room in disgust. I almost threw my computer across the room in disgust.

The scary thing was how deluded I was, how Mr. Killer Robot and I indulged in so much magical thinking. We just assumed we'd work things out, just boogie along until a perfect solution presented itself. We started July 2007 with a wretched apartment and no child care and ended August 2007 with a ridiculously expensive apartment and ridiculously expensive childcare. Apparently the only way to solve problems in San Francisco was to throw money at them, and if you didn't have any money, you just put it on the credit card. That's what much of the country was doing in 2007, and even if that made us more typical than we knew it didn't make our actions any less appalling. Much of the country was on some magical thinking train where home prices and credit limits always went up. The Dow hit 14,000 the week before we moved to San Francisco, then the stock market started to wig out a bit and the whole country started its inexorable slide to recession, which began December 2007.

It's very hard, I've found, to honestly lay out all the fateful and wrongheaded decisions Mr. Killer Robot and I made and not turn the whole thing into a pity party. Obviously the situation was kind of impossible, but nobody put us in that situation but ourselves.

Still, I'm kind of grateful to be out of that first week we arrived in San Francisco and I can take a broader look at things again. But a big financial blow awaits our family in August 2007 and I'm kind of dreading that. It's about a credit card bill and I can remember that day as if it were yesterday, sitting on a folding chair with the bills strewn on top of unpacked moving boxes.

But, thank heavens, I'm finished writing for today, so I'll think about that tomorrow.