I empathized maybe a little too much with this post. Thank you for writing it.
Sometimes I’ll read something written by a person from a different area of the world and be utterly baffled- these people are WALKING to the store? I mean, there’s a Braum’s about half a mile away, but if you’re actually buying things that can be pretty impractical. I live pretty close to the metro in my state, but even still, everything’s pretty far away.
Something I’ve noticed about Europeans in particular- what to us is the next big town over, is the next country over to many of them. “Hey, there’s a meetup in Austin! That’s only about 300 miles away!” is like “Well, there’s a meeting in France, but no way I’m driving 300 miles just for that.” America is BIG. If you take a major highway, there can be a hundred miles between one town and the next.
The whole, “well, why don’t you just move somewhere better?” is particularly crazy when you think about this. Movers cost hundreds of dollars a day. Moving any great distance takes days. Getting a new residence is RIDICULOUSLY expensive in the “nice” places. Rent for a 1000sqft apartment in New York is more than I’ve made in the last six months. Then there’s downpayments, utilities, setting up new accounts for phones and internet, etc. You’ll probably need a new license. College costs TRIPLE if you move out of state, because there’s this awful thing they do where if you haven’t been a state resident for X period of time, they get to charge you triple tuition. Heaven forbid you have to move with another person- a kid, say. I’d have to save for YEARS to be able to afford the first three months of a new residence.
I empathized maybe a little too much with this post. Thank you for writing it.
Sometimes I’ll read something written by a person from a different area of the world and be utterly baffled- these people are WALKING to the store? I mean, there’s a Braum’s about half a mile away, but if you’re actually buying things that can be pretty impractical. I live pretty close to the metro in my state, but even still, everything’s pretty far away.
Something I’ve noticed about Europeans in particular- what to us is the next big town over, is the next country over to many of them. “Hey, there’s a meetup in Austin! That’s only about 300 miles away!” is like “Well, there’s a meeting in France, but no way I’m driving 300 miles just for that.” America is BIG. If you take a major highway, there can be a hundred miles between one town and the next.
The whole, “well, why don’t you just move somewhere better?” is particularly crazy when you think about this. Movers cost hundreds of dollars a day. Moving any great distance takes days. Getting a new residence is RIDICULOUSLY expensive in the “nice” places. Rent for a 1000sqft apartment in New York is more than I’ve made in the last six months. Then there’s downpayments, utilities, setting up new accounts for phones and internet, etc. You’ll probably need a new license. College costs TRIPLE if you move out of state, because there’s this awful thing they do where if you haven’t been a state resident for X period of time, they get to charge you triple tuition. Heaven forbid you have to move with another person- a kid, say. I’d have to save for YEARS to be able to afford the first three months of a new residence.