This photo is from the real estate listing for my recently-sold condo in Palm Springs. My realtor told me people said it looked like a New York loft! (Maybe discounting the heat-blasted bougainvillea outside.)

I bought it in 2001. At the time, I was living and working in San Francisco, and had recently sold a place in West Hollywood (which I now regret, but isn’t that what hindsight is all about…).

I couldn’t afford anything in San Francisco. One room studios for $300K and up just seemed pretty ridiculous to me. I entertained the idea of buying a place in Guerneville (the Russian River), and looked for awhile there, but in the end decided I wouldn’t probably want to spend weekends up there for most of the year. Besides, it was difficult to find a house in the forest which had  a) any sun and b) was not on the floodplain with a watermark on the facade – in my price range, anyway.

So it dawned on me that Palm Springs might be a good place to invest. Prices were so much less there than in the cities, and truthfully, the climate difference between SF and PS is profound. I am a warm weather lover. I adored going down there for long weekends. My job at the time also allowed me to visit the L.A. office (Dolby Laboratories) in Burbank, so most often the travel back and forth was “subsidized.” Ah, the good-bad old days of corporate largesse…

They can’t produce penetration due http://aimhousepatong.com/item7086.html levitra prescription to their prior life experience. Thus, helps in increasing the order tadalafil online sperm count of men and helps to cure erectile dysfunction naturally. One woman saved almost half sildenafil overnight shipping on her Plavix each month through a Canadian site. This disturbed sugar level of blood can viagra sales france create very unfavorable critical health conditions.

And the truth is Palm Springs put out quite well for a weekend getaway. That’s just long enough to enjoy the pool and the sun, the insane amount of quiet, the party that happens on Friday and Saturday nights and ends about Sunday at 4. My coworkers thought I was crazy to make the 525-mile drive each way drive every other weekend or so, but to me it seemed worth it, depending on the month and the amount of rain in San Francisco.

It all changed a few months after I bought the place when I came down with cancer. I spent a couple of months in the barely furnished place to recover from an operation, and what a wonderful experience that was. But what it also brought with it was an intense realization of mortality, mine yes, but everyone else’s, too.

I ended up leaving that job the next year as my priorities for life had changed rather dramatically. I moved first to the condo in PS, and realized after just two months there that there was no way in hell that I could live there full time. I first rented a room back in LA, then a converted garage, and  finally a flat in Los Feliz and then in 2006 put the condo on the market.

Bad timing! After a year, it not only did not sell, it had no offers, and no prospects. I had already moved full-time back to Los Angeles and pleaded with the realtor to find a tenant. We ended up with two over the course of two years: “Deadbeat Darlene,” who just decided to stop paying the rent with no explanation, and then a gay couple who always paid the rent – no matter if it was 2 days or two months late, they always, eventually, paid it.

In March of 2010 when they gave their notice, I was unemployed and responsible for both that mortgage and my L.A. rent. Weighing the options, I decided to move back out to the desert, get the condo ready for a sale, and hope the market might provide me with a window.

Long story long, it did. I even made a tiny profit on the place, but only due to the fact that I bought it 10 years ago.

So, what’s it like to live in P.S. full time? Let me say some people – of all ages – love it. They love the quiet, they love the heat, they love the convenience (like, no lines, easy and free parking, no traffic jams, etc) or they love the specific amenities like golf or tennis or if GLBT, the GLBT population.

What I can say about it is, it’s astoundingly hot in the summer, and it’s colder than the coasts in the winter at night. It is a year-round place now, so not everything closes up in the summer though there is a noticeable drop in the population, traffic, and people out and about.

There are ways to make a living out there if you’re in one of a few special categories, like tourism, health care, or real estate or anything that supports real estate like AC, plumbing, interior design, furniture sales, pool maintenance, etc.

There didn’t seem to be much call for corporate PR mavens. Or even non-profit PR mavens. Or filmmakers. Or novelists. Unless, of course, you had an income coming from somewhere else – like social security, or a pension. Sorry to say, I’m not there yet.

There would be days, particularly in the summertime, when I’d be inside the condo, closed up against the frighteningly strong and deadly sun, and the air conditioning would be humming (and I’d be praying that today would not be the day the unit would die, forcing me to spend $5K on a new system) and it would otherwise be so quiet, so still, I could hear a clock in my head. Tick-tock.

Tick-tock.

Perhaps I’d look out the window and see one of my neighbors navigating her wheelchair along the pathway to the mailbox.

Tick-tock.

Again it would be silent and I’d think, what will become of me here? It was like I had abandoned my life. Loneliness does not really describe it. It was more a combination of panic and a deep realization of being stranded 100 miles from civilization.

I’m not sure what I think about being retired, and wonder if this will even be possible, or desirable, for members of my generation and those that follow. It’s a recent invention, only made possible by things like advances in health care and pensions. Totally, a 20th century invention. In the past, people who couldn’t work were cared for by their extended families and most did not live to be old. If you were single, there was the poorhouse. It was bleak. It may be very bleak again, if anti-social safety net folks get their way.

But what I realized about all that was that even if I was ever retired, I’d prefer the city. I figured I’d had the PS retirement experience, as I lived there for a considerable time without working. So I know what it’s like.

I don’t have to do it again.

So again, Goodbye to All That, and I look forward to the wistful visits to come.