A Living, Breathing Organism

Okay, so I'm a bit of a craigslist addict. I'll admit it. It's not that difficult to get addicted. First of all, you can find essentially anything you could want. And I mean anything from a sofa to a Steinway to someone to hang out at the bar with. Seriously. My friends date on craigslist, get their furnishings from craigslist. I have reacched out to friends on craigslist, developed connections and really had a chance to look at apartments I wouldn't have even known about with it.

But this isn't really what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about today is trying to get out of the city while being poor. It's not as easy as it sounds. You don't want to put the effort into day trips, and yet you can't afford a Hamptons home. Again, craigslist. Where there is a section specifically for "Housing Swap". Meaning you and someone you don't know switch houses rent free for a day or a week or in some cases, several months. I'm fascinated. I love the idea of being able to do this and trying to work out when I could do this. It's like having a cheap vacation!

So I'm checking into it. Finding out who is willing to put up with a cat in a studio apartment in exchange for me luxuriating at the shore or in the mountains or something. It's very ritzy. Really. In North Carolina, people just pick up vacation homes. THey generally purchase a place at the beach or a lake or just out in the country and then have it at their leisure (unless you have a beach cottage that you rent). But in the North that's not really optional. You can have whatever you want, but at a high price. Someone in NC would never dream of spending $10 million dollars on a house at the beach. And thats the lower end for some of the Hampton areas. But here, it's not only acceptable but practically normal. Such is New York.

And craigslist steps in for those of us without very large disposable incomes. We can swap houses or apartments for a weekend, take off to the country, pretend that you're meant to be living out there, and escape back into the city just in time to fall back into the work week. Sounds like a plan to me.