But have you been happy?
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Pretty sure you know the answer to that, know that it has to do with childhood physical and sexual abuse.
Do you think it was me moving around or do you thing it was the childhood abuse?
What is your history? Grow up in the basement? Move upstairs? Or did you go away to college? Grad School.
I am not oppositional on this, genuinely curious. Wonder if you think it would have been better for me to stay in the abusive home?
This is fine (probably preferable and healthy) for older people, but in my view, it screams unambitious and lazy for younger people
I honestly do not understand this concept
agreedā¦ unless that āhometownā is somewhere with great opportunities
For example, I would not be mad if I met someone who grew up in a nice area in Shanghai and wanted to move back. Iād honestly be impressed if he were able to
In the @jshaving scenario, it would not be move back to Shanghai. They would have never moved.
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Another thing that was not mentioned is how bad it can be for the kids.
shitty places ā shitty schools ā much higher chance of a shitty future, especially with how things are set up in the US
I recently said this in a different thread when another poster assumes that because I lived in a small town, it must mean that I lived in a small West Virginia mining town 50 miles off the county road in 1930, but just because someone stays in one town doesnāt mean they lack perspective.
Iām 24. Iāve spent about four years total of my life in Germany. I went around Europe while living there. Iāve spent a couple years total in the Twin Cities. I visited family in LA as a kid too. Iāve āseen the world,ā and Iāve enjoyed doing so. I donāt think merely visiting a place means you really have any idea what it means to be a person from there though. Whether you go to Compton, Nebraska, Japan, or Italy, you donāt really understand it from a week long trip.
I think it is uninformed and ignorant to assume oneās own experiences will mirror everyone elseās.
I see the same thing in my wealthy Minneapolis cousins and their peers who went to extremely famous and wealthy colleges and now are pursuing careers on the West Coast. They have their own tribalism, and lack any perspective of what my existence is like, or how people outside of the city live. They will likely partner with and have children with people who have lived similar lives, and create their own form of inbreeding where their offspring will, like them, have little clue how people different from them actually live. We all do it.
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No. They are saying whatever will make them money.
It doesnāt do women any favors either. Besides, Trump became president.
You know whats funny? My grandfather & his family came over from Scotland and moved to this, but in western PA. Then them and a bunch of other people from all over europe Built the community, literally. Paved the roads, ran water & electric, police, fire dept. & ambulance, and much more.
Skip ahead 110 years, and youād never guess that one of the most sought after communities in the region was a coal patch full of people that just got off the boat.
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Sorry for the long post. Iāve got nothing going on and just started typing until I realized, wait, this is getting too long, haha.
Purely based off several years of posting on here together, we have fundamentally different aspirations.
I love college. I work hard at it. 4.0, honors program, all that. In the past year, Iāve presented my research at four conferences around the country. I won a national prize a few months ago. Iām starting a graduate program next year. But itās just a chapter of my life. Itās certainly not my biggest priority or my main source of pride.
Your life seems to revolve around accomplishments. If you are not doing more and being more successful than you were yesterday, you feel that youāre failing. (This is my interpretation - I sincerely apologize if Iām wrong.) Some of your biggest concerns over the past several years have been getting into the best programs to study the field you love.
Not everyone wants that life. I know a young guy who is taking over the family farm that has been in his family since 1880. His dad is sick so heās letting go sooner than planned. This kid will probably make more money by age 25 than certainly I, and likely you, could ever hope to make. Is this true success? To some people. Either way, is he unambitious or lazy? I donāt think so.
I know of a local kid who is probably around 12 years old. Heās literally a genius. Heās doing college level math and is fluent in Latin. He wants to go to trade school and become a diesel mechanic. If he doesnāt stay in our small town, heāll probably just to go to another small town closer to the tech school. Either way, leaving home does not appear to be a goal of his. But heās got plenty of ambition. Heās highly intelligent and very hardworking.
I donāt know if I always understand it either. My great grandmother grew up in a small community along the Missouri River. In the 1960s, the US Army Corps of Engineers flooded her home, and many communities like it, on Lakota reservations across the state. Most people who lived there moved an hour or more away, to actual towns. Her parents did. She went with them, but disliked the town they went to. She missed the view of the river she was used to. She moved around the country for a few years, going to school, working jobs, and participating in the Indian civil rights movement.
When she came back, a āreplacementā community for the one that had been flooded had been built near the ānewā river bank. Sheās been there for probably 40 years now. Thereās nothing there. A group of 40 houses or so on a hilltop. You canāt see it from the road. Thereās no signs. It doesnāt appear on maps. The nearest school and gas station are 10 miles away. When winter storms hit, you better hope you have enough propane and food, because you wonāt be going anywhere until the plows are able to go out.
I donāt want to live there. I like having the grocery store, the bank, Target, McDonaldās, etc. only 5 minutes away.
But when I go visit her and sit on the hillside, watching the river flow and the buffalo herd graze, and see every star in the sky at night, I understand why she chooses to stay there. Itās home for her. And I think thatās a beautiful thing.
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Both of these are accurate
I admit I was generalising. My issue with small rural towns is more the lack of opportunity in most cases
Something like
is a pretty special exception
You and the genius kid are exceptions too. People like you and him donāt/wonāt let the limitations of being in a worse resourced area hold you or your kids back.
I spent the first 12 years of my life in an area with shite schools and such (not poor by any means but the schools were shite). However, the small Chinese community banded together to create an entire extracurricular education system to make up the deficit. I didnāt learn anything new in a school maths class until Calc 2 junior year of HS bc of the supplemental maths classes.
It took a LOT of effort, but my parents were more than willing to put that effort in. Iām very very very confident that you would also put in similar effort if you found something in your community to be subpar. A lot of other people arenāt able or willing so being in areas can set the kids back
I think I just have a lower than average ability to connect emotionally with people/things/places.
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Hot take: I find excessive drinking within your friend group one of the most selfish things I see people do regularly. You end up putting a burden on your friends who end up stuck caring for you and making sure you get home safe or whateverā¦a responsibility they may not have consented to.
In most discourse, Iāve always been given the impression that people view this as just the norm and if you donāt take care of your friend, youāre the asshole. Iāve always seen it the other way around. Your friend is the asshole for putting you in that situation, and if you do take care of them, they should be buying you a high end dinner at the very least to show enormous gratitude.
Itās honestly one of the most confounding of societal norms to me. Like we are adults, and know the consequences of drinking alcohol, yet we continually fuck over our friends who just care about our well-being and force them to sacrifice enjoying their own nights out.
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It hits differently when youāve been somewhere long enough to see changes and difference, and especially if youāre one of the people that makes the difference.
Like, I built the frames in the new addition to the church I live right behind. I showed them to my son when we were walking around the block a few years ago. And other stuff, like Heinze Chapel, St. Pauls cathedral, etc. So, I really feel like part of the terrain. The Costco in Homestead that you shopped at- I was on the crew that built the refrigeration system during its construction.
That type of sentiment will make more sense and have greater value as you move on in your academic career and build a body of work, change kids lives, and make your own.
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As Iāve dabbled in building things, I can agree that it is a very nice feeling to drive by a house or through a town, point to something, and say, āI helped create that.ā
Makes me wonder what it was like to build one of those really huge European cathedrals, where youād have generations of dudes working on the same building. Itās hard to imagine that concept in todayās world, and Iām probably glamorizing it since I didnāt have to do it, but I just think actually creating tangible things with your own two hands is so effing cool.
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Oh yeah! Some of those places are wild. The US isnāt old enough to have that. Some places were started in like the 1400ās, expanded in the 15 & 1600ās and changed hands several times in the process.
Thereās a church on the other side of town I built a bunch of stuff for and went to a wedding at.
The guy I worked forās grandfather was the main stained glass company for this in the 1930ās, and when I told him I was going to a wedding there his eyes lit up, because he used to go there to do repairs and additions with his grandfather when he was a kid.
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Firstly, I am as well-traveled as you, perhaps a little more so, and have moved around a great deal within the US. I grew up in the NY-NJ-CT tri-state area until leaving my fatherās house in CT at 16 to live for a few months in San Diego as your garden-variety runaway/urchin. There I was able to try out being a live-in maid to wealthy people and also spend a couple of weeks in a locked halfway house for addicts, though I was not one. Super interesting. Returning to the east coast, I landed in Richmond, where my mother lived at the time, GEDād, and was based there for the next few years, dropping in and out of college. Additionally, I have lived in Atlanta, Columbia, SC, and Dallas/Fort Worth (both sides of the Metroplex) as well as Austin, TX. I now live in rural New England.
I returned to and attended college and grad school when my children were young, in both TX and NE. So four small kids, a labrador retriever, a cat, and full time school, along with whatever internships were required of me.
THUS ENDS MY CREDS.
I have to work out, and do some stuff, but Iāll come back to this to answer the rest.
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Coming back to this, @The_Mythā¦I donāt think I recall anything from you about physical or sexual abuse. I remember you realizing that you were dealing with symptoms of PTSD, but as someone who was highly sensitive to emotional factors rather than as a victim of standard abuse. No, of course I donāt think you should have stayed in an abusive home. Why would you ask that?
I want to be careful here, because I wonder if youāre okay and sort of think you may not be.
I have accused you in the past of seeking external solutions for internal problems. You have now expanded to offering a scathing condemnation of @jshavingās life, with which he reports being entirely content. You and I have both seen enough of @jshavingās adolescence and early adulthood to know that he is not at all uninformed, ignorant, or inbred. What gives?
As far as I go, I now live in a village whose population is 1K. The town I work in has a population of around 15K. I love it so much here. I love that Iāve now lived here long enough to have a history in this place. I love that my work allows me to feel grounded in a way my life never has. My clients are professors and students at the nearby university; murals in the area were done by a former client; I know which McDonalds had green stuff in the coffee maker some years ago; and my physician is a former colleague.
I love that my kids get to see the places they worked as teens and run into old teachers occasionally. (3/4 are scattered within an hour or so of me, 1 is in PA.) If this is tribalism, I adore it.
So we could imagine that given the above-listed opportunities to observe different cultures, Iāve already done what I needed to do to expand myself, or whatever. But I have close friends who have been pretty much here always - some for generations - and I donāt see a great deal of difference.
If there is difference, honestly, itās that I lack the sense of belonging that they have. Theyāre able to spend a little money and experience what I have, but Iāll never NOT have spend most of my life as a transient, with limited family ties.
Iāve also found suburbia/exurbia soulless and mind-numbing in its indistinguishability. Give me the weird entanglements of small town living any day.
In closing:
Two men look out
through the same bars,
One sees the mud,
and one sees the stars
In my view, pretty much regardless of living situation.
I hope youāre okay.
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Weāve talked a little from time to time about this, but I think you meant to tag @The_Myth.
And I agree about the danger zone.
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Oops! Yes, I did. Iāll edit him in.
Which danger zone, lol? (Iām on such a desperate diet, Iām eating the dogās food. I have no idea what Iām doing.)
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This one:
I was getting a bad vibe too.
You ever use mct oil?
My one brother has been diving into keto style eating and he loves it. He also has a very high speed intensely smart brain that needs to be well fed.
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