Living (Where and why?)

[Kujacker]

As some of you know, I’ve been unsuccessfully trying to get out of here. I don’t like the heat, or the sun. I don’t like having to drive 20 minutes+ just to get to something (movie theatres, natural food stores, book stores, etc).
After narrowing things a bit, I’m pretty sure I decided that I wanted to go to Oregon or Washington… and now I think I want to go to Seattle specifically.
I tried getting a job in Austin Texas a couple months back. While I love Austin, I can’t see myself living there. I guess it’s a good thing I never got any call backs 🙄 On that same note, I honestly like where I live. I like Arizona as a whole… it’s just not the place for me anymore. And I know when I do finally leave, I’ll be sad to go (I’ve lived here for something like 20 years. All in the same house too). Anyone know the feeling?

I wish I had the money so I could take a trip right now to both Washington and Oregon. Seeing and liking a place in the “worst” time of the year means you’ll like it even better in the “good” time of the year. My parents visited Spokane Washington during the summer seasons and once they moved there (I was in kindergarten) they found out they couldn’t stand it during the winter months.

So I was wondering. Where do you live and why? What keeps you there? Do you just love it or you’re like me, and trapped in a place you don’t want to be?
Anywhere you visited, or didn’t visit, that you felt you wanted to move to when you could? Why is that do you think?

[Kujacker]

[siberakh1]

I love the northeast and the four seasons we get (yes, I actually like snow). Well, while I’m a little stuck in the town/house here because of bill paying from college loans, I do like the area/region, but I’d prefer to be living in my own space out in the country. I don’t mind living outside of town and having to drive… I currently live in a village at the moment and, while there are some things I can walk to, most things I do need to drive about 10-15 minutes to get to, but I don’t mind so much. I commute 2 hours daily for work (1 hour to, 1 hour home). I just turn on the radio, pop in a cd, or just enjoy the scenery or do some thinking/planning. I just plan ahead of time and don’t make trips for every little thing unless it’s something that can’t wait when it comes to stores, or plan to get things on my way home (if the store is open late – I work nights), or on my way to work. I’m not opposed to the idea of living in similar surroundings elsewhere in the northern parts of the country (or countries) with comparable weather/climate. I don’t like hot weather (especially humid/hot), so too far south is out for me. Haven’t been to the desert, but the landscape isn’t green enough for my tastes, so though it is pretty in it’s own right, living there is out for me. 🙂

[Jessie]

i grew up in arizona… never liked it much, except the severe storms in the summer. that i miss. but, ive been in southern california since i was 20. at first it was great… you know the whole “wow, i saw this place on tv once!” and chances of seeing a “movie star” had its novelty. now that i’ve grown up a bit and found my place in the world, i’ve been really rethinking it all. unfortunately i’m pretty much stuck here. my husband is working towards owning the family business here and we would pretty much be starting from scratch if we moved anywhere else. so.. there goes any sort of excitement of packing up and moving to a place completely foreign to the both of us (my husband grew up in so cal). i would love to live somewhere that has lots of wilderness and forests. pretty much in the middle of nowhere with a cute little rustic house, endless animal friends, and that i can have the hugest and most lush garden ever… okay, i’ll stop daydreaming now… 😳

[Jerusha]

Well, Kujacker, I think you already know all this from my end 😀
I grew up in the midwest, specifically Minnesota. I would never, ever live there again. Just because of the winters alone. (Though I am willing to visit in mid-winter. Just not willing to live in it full time.) Same deal for the 3 years I lived in Chicago. I felt like a hothouse flower that got misplanted in a sidewalk crack there.

I loved living in Portland, Oregon the best by far. The smell of the fresh mountain/ocean air. The fact that a mountaintop and the oceanside were only an hour’s drive away in either direction. Seeing Mount Hood on the horizon. The deep green forests like something straight out of a fantasy novel. The fact that it would only snow a teeny tiny bit once or twice in Portland proper, but a 30 min drive could get you to a great sledding adventure in the foothills. And sure, it rains for days on end… but just for a little while, once a day. I could go on. I would move back in a heartbeat, if it weren’t for what is keeping me in Arizona.

Both the grandmas live in Arizona though. So here we stay. At least until the kiddies are a little older – or some really, really compelling reason to move elsewhere comes up.

Anyway, my vote continues to be 100% Portland!

[Tina]

We live in Northern Alberta, Fort McMurray specifically, and deal with the Oilsands. We have a month of Spring and a month of Fall, 5 months of summer and 5 months of winter 😀 . I LOVE living up here, its a city of 80,000+ people, but its separated into different sections so it doesnt seem like a large city. There are groomed quad/ski-doo trails for summer and winter use, there are 70+kms of walking trails throughout the city, several free outdoor sprinkler parks for kids. Heck we even have free to use outdoor gym equipment. The city has been pushing to make it a more family friendly city and its working. We have several festivals a year, a collage, rivers, a huge lake, a ski hill, just lots of stuff to do, if one wants to take part. But down to the nitty gritty, we moved here for the same reason most people move here…money. There is lots to be made of one wants. i am currently at $19.50 an hour to do night audit at a hotel, I also get $450 a month for LOA (living out allowance), brings me up to about $25/hour, and i pretty much get to do what ever I want. I sew, crochet, paint PYO’s, knit, watch TV, heck I can even sleep for a few hours if I want, as long as I answer the phone, check people into rooms, and open the doors and have coffee ready for 5am.

[Adaneth]

Born in Minnesota, lived in the state all my life. Love the winters/springs/autumns, hate the summers, but that precludes my moving to most of the rest of the country as well, since I can’t stand heat (makes my seasonal depression kick in bad).

So in my case, I love my state and don’t want to leave my job, just hate my wretched flood-prone apartment in the ugly little corner of ugly suberb I’m stuck in now (don’t like neighborhoods period, I’m a hermit at heart).

I did just visit Oregon for the first time last August, and I sure wouldn’t mind seeing more of it! The coast is gorgeous! But wherever I live there must be forests around…if it weren’t for that, I’d love to relocate to North Dakota. They know how to make REAL winters up there 😉 unlike Minnesota, where the reputation exceeds the reality, IMO.

[Apari]

I’ve lived in a town with a pop of 1,100 in Oklahoma all of my life. It’s tiny, we don’t even have a chain restaurant! But it’s what I call “home”.
I commute 1 hour a day to work, which is in a town that has a pop of 35,000 people. I plan to move there sometime in the near future… Within the next year or 2 if plans go right.
I wouldn’t leave the area, just because of family and friends. (That’s what really makes home, home 2 me)
Hate the summers, it stays in the upper 100’s and even 110’s but it’s humid which makes it that much worse. The winters are also humid, but we don’t get much snow at all down here… Which I hate because I love snow. 🙁
I’ve never been to Oregon or Washington, but would love to go one of these days.
I visited Atlanta, GA. a few years back and loved it! It’s a lot greener than where I live.

That’s where I live, pretty boring so I don’t recommend moving to Oklahoma, there’s nothing to do here! 🙄 It could be worse though I suppose. 😉

[Jennifer]

I have lived in several places; not as many as some though. I’ve lived in Marietta, GA (suburb of Atlanta), Houston TX, Clear Lake, TX (suburb of Houston), Newton, NJ briefly, and in a small town in Western NY state.

I was born in NY and lived there until I was 18, when I moved to Houston. Was there for a few years, before moving to Clear Lake. Then I moved back home briefly, then to NJ, then to Georgia. I lived there for several years before coming back to NY. I know there are some people that leave their hometown, if they had one, and never look back. And then there are those like me that it calls to like no other place!

I bought a house here. With the current housing market, and my intentions, I may well live in this house the rest of my life unless I hit the lottery (haha!). So what has me rooted here? Well it’s not the local economy or job market. This part of the state has been economically depressed since the oil business moved out in the early 1900s. The job market here is miserable- I mean, it’s miserable even when the economy is doing well. And the taxes! Last year the county I live in was on the national ‘top ten’ .. we have one of the worst ratios of taxes vs. average household income in the country. And it’s not convenience… I have to order anything that a normal grocery store or drug store won’t have in stock. All of my pet and art supplies I have to have shipped to me; the nearest city is a 2-hour drive one way and during winter (which can last 7 months) driving is not always an option. It’s also not because I have friends here… sadly none of my buddies live anywhere nearby (though to be fair moving near them wouldn’t help for long either… all of my friends have been moving around regularly too and are all in different corners of the USA). And it’s not because I can sell my art here, that is for sure. I have done several exhibitions and shows. The economy here just does not support art, even my jewelry. I have not sold a single thing locally. Thank heavens for the internet.

So why on earth here? Well, it comes down to two things. Family and scenery. I am close to my parents and some of my extended family. We still do weekly family dinners and do a lot of things together. Camping, going on trips. It’s very important to me to have my family within a reasonable driving distance. Also, the scenery, landscape, and climate here. It just resonates with me. I’m one of those people that I can deal with being out of my element for a while, but if it’s long term I start to get really depressed and just… nutty. I can’t deal with it. When I was living in Houston and in Atlanta (though Atlanta wasn’t as bad because we were in the ‘burbs, but still) I thought I was going to go out of my mind. I just couldn’t cope with living in the concrete jungle, with carefully planted trees and bushes and flowers scattered among the pavement in perfect rows. All the people, and noise, and pollution. I just couldn’t! Even when we got out of town and into nature I did like visiting it, but I never felt at home. I was a stranger.

All the things, big and small, that I love most are here (except for friends). I sacrifice quite a few things (good jobs, reasonable taxes, convenience, etc) by staying here, but it’s worth it to me.

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[twindragonsmum]

Ku, I grew up in the Bay Area of California and loved it. Now, though, it feels too crowded 🙁 After Roddy and I married we moved to Richland, Washington which is on the dry side of the state. It’s high desert and took some getting used to after Cali, but it was home for Rod and his folks are there and it was a great experience! From there we followed work to Utah in the Salt Lake Valley. Lots of great cultural activities and the scenery is gorgeous, but like Cali, it’s getting too crowded for our tastes. We go where the job takes us and so that meant Soda Springs, Idaho for 5 years-ish and now Idaho Falls. Soda is tiny but the people are fantastic! We only had to walk out the back door (or the front) and there was unlimited hiking, camping, fishing, and hunting (if you’re into that) It’s close to Jackson Hole, Wyoming and Yellowstone National Park and right on the historic Oregon Trail. The downside was tough, tough winters (I’ll post pix if you want) and you had to travel over an hour to get to “civilization” 🙂 but we hated to leave. Idaho Falls is turning into a blessing in disguise 😀 Not as big as some places we’ve lived and not as small as others. Great educational opportunites, some really wonderful museums and art galleries, still really close to Jackson and Yellowstone, still close to camping, fishing, etc. Now closer to the Tetons and Craters of the Moon and the people here are great. The boys were accepted into the neighborhood, school, scouts, church without any akward ‘fitting in’ time. I’ve got neighbors here that feel like family, like I’ve known them forever and that was in a very short time (we moved here in June). We have 4 definate seasons and so far winter hasn’t been as cold as it was in Soda. Heck, I’d love to have you here! I’d also recommend Oregon or Washington. We have family in both states and I love both places. The Columbia River Gorge is spectacular along with the rest of the scenery. You’ve basically got everything you could ask for in a very short distance, relatively speaking… coast, mountains, desert, forest, rivers, history, art, educational opportunities, outdoor activities, etc. I don’t think you could lose if you consider the Pacific Northwest! Good luck!

twindragonsmum :snappy: 😀

tdm

[pipsxlch]

I live in Florida because for me it’s ‘home’, although this part of Florida isn’t and I feel very much trapped here/can’t wait to leave. I don’t think you’d like it here- hot/humid summers that are 7-8 months of the year. We do have a ‘winter’ here, but not cold enough for leaf drop or snow- just what would probably be ‘spring’ to most folks, and still pretty humid. Here in the Orlando area where I am, it’s a cultural wasteland- there’s the Mouse (and competitors) and that’s pretty much it. That’s if you can afford them. Wages are low, and we are still very very much in the recession- jobs just can’t be had. We are a service economy also, so not a whole lot that is decent wage even in good times. It’s totally awesome being able to watch rocket launches, and I do enjoy Kennedy Space Center, but… Developers are considered gods here, and whatever they want/say is what goes, no matter long term land use plans, enviromentally sensitive lands, wetlands, threatened or endangered species (the gopher tortoise, a threatened species, is regularly buried alive by developers, which is permitted). Sprawl is therefore horrendous. There are places less than 15 miles from me that it takes an hour or more to drive to, because of the traffic and no real system of highways and through routes. Public transportation is essentially nonexistant outside of Orlando proper. The rural areas are very rapidly disappearing, will probably be totally gone within my lifetime. We’re a very wet state, but already there’s not enough groundwater to go around. But I remember the beauty of the rural areas down south (now gone), the ‘Glades that stretched on forever… I like the heat and humidity, would like summer all year round. I don’t think I could handle the desert (never seen one), without all the green and so dry. I like storms and rain. But I’m a hermit at heart, and don’t want neighbors- I don’t mind driving to get to what I need. I have found living elsewhere that i need to be within shouting distance of the ocean. Living up north for a time, it was beautiful and seasons were cool, snow was freaky/neat, but as things to visit, not ‘reality’. Even mountains were weird/beautiful, but i’m a flatlander at heart.
My husband lived for a time in Hawai’i, and keeps throwing it out. It sounds wonderful, but I don’t see how I could ever get there. Kind of a fantasy, like going on the space shuttle one day.
Ruffian, I wonder about the cost of living where you are. Maybe it cancels out much of the good wages? I could handle living in a place I didn’t belong for a time, if it was enabling me to go where I did.

[WolfenMachine]

Jennifer wrote:

I have lived in several places; not as many as some though. I’ve lived in Marietta, GA (suburb of Atlanta), Houston TX, Clear Lake, TX (suburb of Houston), Newton, NJ briefly, and in a small town in Western NY state.

Hey! Ive been there! My half sister and her family live there.

Unfortunately I will not be much help. You and I are in the same boat, Kujacker. I live in Houston and I hate the summers here. Locally, I’d rather be in Austin-its a few degrees cooler and WAY cooler in the awesome rating scale. The winters are good in south Texas but just about the time it gets really cold (December) its warm again (March/April) and by mid to late May its hot and stays hot until usually October 31 is when the cold spell tries to roll in. I too want to move to Oregon or Washington state. I havent heard anything bad-it rains a lot, its cold (coldER than here) there’s lots of blackberries, apparantly (Melody mentioned something-they’re my favorite fruit) and big green trees, thick lush forests. Um, where’s the downside again? lol

[LuvsDragons]

I live in Bend Oregon but am originally from the area around Missoula Montana. I moved up here to be closer to my then boyfriend, now ex-husband. I like parts of oregon but im a pine forest girl and really miss western MT. I would move back but at this time i’m still in the middle of my divorce and can’t leave the state because of my son. Hopefully later on I will be able to head back though. I live the weather here because it is almost exactly like what I grew up with in MT. Although I wish we would get more snow in the winter. 😀

[Adaneth]

swoltanski30 wrote:

I live in Bend Oregon but am originally from the area around Missoula Montana. I moved up here to be closer to my then boyfriend, now ex-husband. I like parts of oregon but im a pine forest girl and really miss western MT. I would move back but at this time i’m still in the middle of my divorce and can’t leave the state because of my son. Hopefully later on I will be able to head back though. I live the weather here because it is almost exactly like what I grew up with in MT. Although I wish we would get more snow in the winter. 😀

Only passed through the Missoula area once, but I LOVED it. Montana (the western half 😉 ) is a gorgeous state!

[LuvsDragons]

Only passed through the Missoula area once, but I LOVED it. Montana (the western half 😉 ) is a gorgeous state!

Yes the western half is gorgeous. I must say I’m not a fan of the eastern half. I don’t like the flat. 😳

[Author]

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