I’ve spent the last 2 weeks getting stressed about buying houses. For those of you not in the UK, house prices here have exploded in the last few years. Houses in places like “The Village” (a fairly dodgy rundown loyalist area of Belfast) have tripled in price, so that I would need a mortgage of about 8x my current salary to buy one!

But despite that, I decided a couple of weeks ago that I HAD to get a house ASAP (with the financial help of my parents). I began worrying about the prospect “of never owning a house” and started believing all the estate agent rhetoric about “prices eternally going up.” I found myself deeply regretting not buying a house a couple of years ago, regretting starting a PhD, and becoming increasingly envious of my many house owning friends who have seen their properties double or triple in value. I even questioned whether I should abandon my financial commitments to my Church and charities to realise the singular goal of getting a house.

Somehow in that madness I managed to bring the situation to God, and somehow God gave me a peace about it all, and I stopped worrying about it.

I think there are two “Rowans”. One who always worries about not succeeding in life, not achieving the worldly goal of a job + car + house + hot wife + 2nd car + conservatory + pension, and one who wants something more than that. One who would settle for a life devoted to paying for the above, and one who realises that that would be a life wasted. One who sees everything, jobs relationships, etc as a chance to prove himself, and one who knows he has nothing to prove to a God who loves him unconditionally.

I was stuck in a traffic jam the other day coming home from work. It was the first time I’d driven to work and the first time I’d been stuck in rush hour traffic. For a few minutes I sat there feeling so satisfied with myself, as if I had now achieved some status of normality. That soon wore off. Normality isn’t as much fun as the adverts tell us.

It’s time to figure what I want in life. We only get one stab at it so we might as well do something meaningful.

Anyway, there was an eclipse of the moon last night and I got a few photos of it…