I have many pathologies, one of them is compulsive use of a website, Redfin.com.

There are many cities in which I look at homes. I look at homes for hours. I will never live in these homes. I will never live in these cities. Many of these cities I don’t even want to live in.

Nor am I looking to move at this time.

I hate moving, actually. I hate boxes and packing them and especially, unpacking them. It is why I still have unpacked boxes from moves several years ago.

But here is what I love: fantasy.

The fantasy of having a slide that shoots from the upstairs to the playroom in the basement (what lucky children live there)!

The fantasy of an old-school elevator, the kind with a collapsible metal screen painted black instead of a proper door, or an outdoor shower by the sea.

The fantasy of any number of architectural styles having nothing to do with one another: mid-century modern, Victorian vampire, camelback fixer-upper, exposed brick artist loft, ugly nouveau riche McMansion (often contains provocative innovations in toileting equipment).

I have realized what this is about. I want to have multiple lives, as many lives as possible.

I want more.

The older I get, the more I have seen the irrevocable finitude of others. And I see my finitude. This one life of mine is moving fast, seemingly accelerating because that is what happens when you gain perspective by way of time.

By fantasizing about a succession of alternate lives, I am able to pretend I have more runway than I probably do. (Though I consider myself to be quite healthy and put effort into that—it would be awesome to live as long as possible.)

I rawdog this website, Redfin.com, no account, no app, gawking homes in my pretend cloak of anonymity.

Of course every site I’ve ever visited is tracking me with “cookies.”

Of course Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and the supposedly depersonalized algorithm know everything.

Redfin.com and the whole internet control apparatus knows damn well I’m a middle-age woman with a long list of additional monetizable insecurities and obsessions (to flatter the ego, we’ll relabel them ‘aspirations’) not specified here. This is escapism with no escape hatch.