during the course of fixing my plumbing problem, it crossed my mind to ask alyson, one of the other owners-not-renters in the department whether being the one in charge causes her to have any more anxiety, on average. her answer was an emphatic 'no'. why? because the convenience of not having to go downstairs and put quarters into a laundry machine every week counterbalances the inconvenience of having to call a plumber every once in a while. because the feelings of self-efficacy cancel out the annoyance when the floorboards accidentally get scratched. and because landlords can suck, and when you're us, the person you most trust is often yourself.

i'm still undecided as to whether this being a landlord business is, on the whole, going to be a positive or negative experience, but i do know this: if anything is going to tip the balance it will be that i'm responsible for the complaints of two other people, and nothing offsets that weight on the other side of the scale. now perhaps the debt has been paid in other ways, but objectively, considering only this endeavor, that's the score. and we'll leave it at that for the time being.