On Speaking Things Into Existence

Some Futures Don't Become Real Until We're Willing to Sound Unreasonable.

Before we ever set foot on this property my wife and I printed out house listings and pinned it to the wall of our rental.

We chose this one, and made an offer before we saw it in person.

Some people would call that impulsive, and they’d be right. But I call it the first time we ever spoke something into existence and trusted the vision more than the uncertainty around it. We knew what we wanted. Land, space, and something we could grow into, and when we found it on paper we didn’t wait for the perfect conditions to say yes.

That was over a decade ago.

It was one of the best decision we ever made.

What we bought on paper and what we discovered over time are definitely two different things. That's not a complaint. It's just the nature of making a commitment before you have the full picture.

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This house has never really been loved.

I can tell by the way it was built. The kitchen lights and half the living room are on the same circuit breaker. The concrete around the pool has cracked. We don’t have gutters so the rain pounds the soil right against the foundation. The plumbing is old. The electrical box probably needs a complete overhaul.

The people who built this place never intended to live here long enough to deal with the problems they were creating. The people who bought it and flipped it had the same energy. A lot of short term decisions stacked on top of each other until what you have is a house that looks fine from a distance and slowly reveals itself the more time you spend with it.

That’s what we bought. And I can be honest about that.

But here’s what else we bought.

One point four seven acres in a goldilocks zone of real estate. More land than we could likely find again for anything close to what we paid. A food forest we’ve been building for years. Sweet potato slips rooting in water in the front yard. Pink muhly grass flowering in the worst soil on the property. Food reseeding itself. A piece of ground that has been receiving our attention and intention for over a decade.

The land is not the problem.

The structure is.

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At some point the math changes.

There’s a point in every renovation (of a house, habits, or just life in general) when the cost of individual repairs starts approaching the cost of a rebuild. When you realize you’ve been patching something that was never quite built right to begin with. When the real question stops being what needs fixing and becomes what would I build if I was building for the long term instead of just managing damage.

That’s where we are right now.

By the time we deal with the electrical, the plumbing, the roof, the pool, the kitchen, we’ll have spent something close to what it would cost to rebuild. The only difference would be smaller individual investments, but we’d still be living in a house built by people who never planned to stay.

I don’t think dreaming too big is the mistake most people make. I think it’s scaling their vision down to fit their current circumstances for the sake of being “realistic.”

So this is the thing I haven’t said to many people yet.

I want to knock this house down and start over.

It’s not a matter of frustration, and it’s not because I’ve given up on this place. I love this land enough to reimagine what sits on it. It’s because I want to build something that feels ancient and futuristic at the same time. A dome house, sustainable materials, no corners cut, built with the long term vision in mind, by someone who actually plans to be here when the problems surface.

My parents told me to replace the roof and sell it.

On paper that makes sense. The property is worth a lot more than what we paid. Logic says take the profit and get a fresh start somewhere else.

But starting over somewhere else means starting over. And what we have here, the land, the food forest, the decade of life poured into this soil, you can’t just find that again. You build that. And we’ve been building it.

I’m not interested in selling.

I’m interested in legacy.

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One day, I want somebody to be able to say, grandpa planted these trees for you.

I’ve never really had a family home. Not in the way I mean when I say it now. A place that holds the family across multiple generations, a property that carries the evidence of the people who loved it. A place that is clear proof that somebody was thinking about you before you were old enough to think about yourself.

I want to build that. Literally.

The bricks and the wood can go. I’m not attached to the structure. But this land, this specific piece of ground in Pasco County, I want this to stay in the family long after I’m gone. Even if we move to Thailand (which is a real possibility lol.) Even if the kids go off on their own adventures. This place is the anchor.

That’s the vision.

I don’t have a full roadmap yet. I don’t know exactly when or how. What I know is that speaking it out loud is the first act of building. I know commitment comes before the plan, and that the path has a way of revealing itself to the person already walking it.

There was a time when we printed out a picture from Zillow, pinned a listing to a wall, and made an offer on a piece of land we’d never seen.

Look where that got us.

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Now I want to hear from you.

What’s the thing you haven’t said out loud yet.

The rebuild you keep postponing. The vision you’re carrying in private because saying it makes it real and real things can fail. What’s the idea that lives in your head fully formed but hasn’t made it into the world yet because the roadmap isn’t complete.

Say it here.

In the comments. Out loud. Where somebody will read it.

You don’t need the full plan.

You just need the courage to claim the direction.

Speaking it is the first act of building it.

Thank you for reading, you are greatly appreciated.

-Corey

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Something from the archive:

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Earlier this year I made a limited edition contemplation zine called Everything and Nothing. 100 hand numbered copies on recycled paper. It exists because I made it before I knew if anybody would want it. A few are still available if you want to hold something made in that spirit