My Precious…Little Apartment
Lessons from a guy who had it all.
Last week, I shared the video of my appearance on the reality TV show, “Tiny House Hunting.” Like I mentioned, the show’s plot was mostly hogwash, but the part about me being a micro-housing expert and the apartment we ended up living in were not. Because I’m too tired to write anything profound, I thought I’d share more about the apartment.
On July 9th, 2012 my father died after a gruesome battle with lung cancer. Nine days later, my first son, Finn, was born. Less than nine months before all that, my ex and I married, and not long before that, my ex/new wife got divorced from her first husband. The stress and confusion of this period, coupled with the fact both of us could work remotely, made us question whether we wanted to live in New York City. With the lease of our tiny Park Slope rental ending soon, we decided to decamp for Beacon, NY, a small town about 70 miles north of the city in the Hudson Valley.
In Beacon, we lived in a gorgeous but impractical loft space in a former mill. With no closed off rooms besides the bathroom and 16 foot high ceilings that carried every sound, it was a miserable place to raise a newborn. Moreover, we knew few people in Beacon and lived on the town’s outskirts, making the experience socially and geographically isolating, especially compared to our hyper-social and local existence in Brooklyn. After about six months, we decided we wanted to return to the city and buy a home.
I was working for a micro-housing startup called LifeEdited as their marketing and communications guy. I figured I could use our new home as a proof of concept for the company, which meant we’d likely buy a smaller (read: cheaper) home and might be able to get some sponsored goods since the first LifeEdited apartment garnered a ton of press coverage.
After an agonizing home search that included multiple bidding wars, we got into contract on a small, sunny apartment overlooking Prospect Park. The place was within our budget, but it was a dump and we decided to do a gut renovation. (Visit Remodelista for more photos without a paywall.)
Overall, the renovation went smooth, lasting about four months from demolition to move-in. I was able to leverage my company’s newsworthiness for sponsored goods —notably, the murphy beds, appliances, plumbing fixtures, and several surface treatments (flooring, marble, etc.).
During the buildout, I was pitching the apartment to the press, and I managed to get a spot in Dwell magazine’s best-selling small space issue in the fall. Almost as soon as we moved in April, 2014, the apartment was being photographed.
I’ll forgo too much editorializing about living in the apartment since my experience was so clouded by an unhappy marriage and raising a toddler, Finn, and then baby Ryder, starting in December, 2014. The location across from the park was my favorite part about it. And while the apartment was efficient, pretty, and tidy, it was far too precious for my tastes. A piece entitled, “Why I don’t Live in a Dwell Home,” nails the downsides of living in a photogenic home.
If I can endow the apartment with any profundity, it’s this. I married the girl I wanted. I bought the apartment in the neighborhood I wanted. I made the perfect children I wanted. I had the cool job I wanted. I got the attention I wanted. I even dressed and looked the way I wanted. I got all the outside stuff I wanted —stuff many people want, but seldom get —and none of it made me happy and whole. Like I wrote about yesterday, happiness and health are inside jobs, and while there’s nothing wrong with wanting marriage, a home, kids, etc., there is something wrong when we develop expectations that those things will make us whole. Take it from me, they will not and cannot.