Why Tiny Houses?

Dearest Rachel –

The other day, I was telling you about how I fell down a rabbit hole of real estate listings, particularly in a place that we’d both individually been to and wanted to return to, but never got the chance to do together (let alone take Daniel with us to show him what we’d seen; that task would fall to me alone, sad to say). That lead to me reminiscing about times when we shared fantasies of second home ownership in exotic (if you want to consider Ohio “exotic,” that’s okay, I suppose) places; which is a little more in line with the point of this site in the first place, if not exactly what I meant to do at the time.

But for the moment, let’s do something that we also had a habit of doing together, and wend our way back through the subject in the first place. There were plenty of times when we would catch ourselves mid-conversation, and wonder how we got to where we were at that point; “What were we talking about again?” We would stop and retrace our steps, wading through our mutual stream of consciousness, splashing each other playfully as we went, until we got to the headwaters that had sent us down this meandering flow. Sometimes, we tried to get back on track of what we had originally meant to discuss; more often than not, as nothing was necessarily urgent to our situation (especially on a long drive, for instance), we got back into our metaphorical inner tubes and let ourselves drift back down as one topic led to another.

And so, I’m going to do that today, as I relate to you the reasons behind my search for Japanese real estate the other day – as well as some of the other things I found myself looking for in that same session of paging through ideas online. Now, I may find myself drifting through other topics in the process, but I hope you’ll indulge me if I do; it’s the sort of thing we would have done together, in any event.

It actually started the night before, as Daniel and I were winding things down after Logan had decided to retire for the night. We have two or three channels that appear to put out content nearly every day (and if they don’t have anything new, their catalog of old material is such that even going through something that was posted three or four years ago – meaning you would have never seen any of it, even if we were watching the channel as a family – still is unfamiliar enough to allow us to enjoy it), and there’s always a video or two that shows up out of the blue that the algorithm thinks we might be interested in watching.

One such “out of the blue” video had to do with a supposed announcement that the Tesla company was on the verge of releasing a tiny house for commercial purchase, and for an absurdly low price (especially considering the price of their cars; if this was to be believed, you could theoretically buy at least half a dozen of these for the price of their Model X). Now, even though I already own a home (and intend to purchase my childhood home when the time comes, thereby letting Daniel take over his childhood home in turn), I have had literal dreams of being able to own (or create) such a home for myself; is this just something that happens to people when they retire, by the way? Even wealthy folks like Neil and Robbie, when they aren’t cruising, settle into the “no fixed abode” life in an Airstream that takes them across the northern part of Texas and much of Oklahoma.

Now, if you clicked on the link and saw the video, you’ll notice something odd about it; for all the images of the alleged tiny home, no one picture looked the same, or even particularly similar. That’s because all of the pictures are fakes, generated by AI. They don’t even have a set prototype model to create a LoRA of, which would at least give some consistency between one shot and another. It so happens that the announcement is a fake; I would say a “complete” fake, but I honestly don’t know if the company doesn’t actually have something that it’s working on along these lines (they would need something to serve as living quarters for those who plan to move to Mars, assuming that’s where Elon still ultimately intends to end up at some point), in which case it’s just a case of someone preemptively talking about it just for clicks. It’s annoying to find out it’s not a thing, but that’s how these things go sometimes.

Of course, the comment section is considerably less chill about it; calling Elon a charlatan (and worse), despite the fact that this video probably has nothing to do with him or any of his companies other than name-checking them for clout. As a side topic – and here we go with the stream of consciousness – much as I hate to bring politics into this, there is a certain fairly sudden antipathy (which is putting it ridiculously lightly) toward the man and his companies these days. The dude puts out a good product, but just because of his politics, he is automatically (sorry, pun not intended… at first) persona non grata, as is everything he does or makes. From my perspective, it’s stupid to be so reflexively anti-someone over politics; it’s gotten to the point where he could offer advice nationwide (or even worldwide, given the reach of the internet) to, say, not consume cyanide, and a goodly number of people might very well poison themselves to death just out of spite for him.

Then again, it might remove a lot of the violent protests against him and the politicians he supports. Even so, that’s not an outcome to hope for.

Anyway, as another sidebar – remember how these things used to go, honey? – barely a day later, my dad was showing me an article he’d seen on FaceBook about some sort of electric aircraft the company was working on releasing for sale to the public. I pointed out that the same issue existed in the video he was showing me – no consistency in the design or shape of the craft, mostly – to warn him that this was every bit as fake as the one Daniel and I had just seen. Although, when I marveled at the fact that these fake videos seemed to be proliferating (at least as far as I was aware), Dad mentioned something that I hadn’t considered; that these fake announcements could generate hype that could boost the company’s stock – and then tank it again as it was revealed to be fake. So there’s a rationale in doing so, even for an average Joe who just owns stock in the company (and maybe wants to divest it, seeing as the man is apparently “evil” for reasons I can’t fathom).

As for this average Joe, my disappointment in finding out that it wasn’t a real thing led me to visit a few sites that actually did sell tiny houses – some of which were even mobile (although the heavy-duty truck to pull them around wasn’t included in the price). Of course, the ones that got my attention came fully-furnished, and with a price tag that… well, let’s just say you could buy several actual Teslas with – even without adding on the towing truck to the mix – and leave it at that.

Still, I can’t help but be intrigued by the possibilities; although without a partner in crime to egg me on, I doubt any of this – be it the tiny house (or the RV life it sort of imitates and possibly improves upon) or the Japanese real estate – is ever going to come to pass in my orbit. Then again, you might just as easily have put the brakes on any of these ideas in any event; who’s to say? Whether it will be a regret I never tried, though, or a relief that I didn’t plunge into the deep end, it’ll probably remain an idea in my head well into the foreseeable future. Hey, it’s good to have these things to reach for; and since these don’t necessarily have to depend on anyone else’s consent or input, they may be more achievable than finding Megumi, they may be that much more possible someday.

For now, though, continue to keep an eye on me, honey, and wish me luck. I suspect I’m still going to need plenty of it.