Must I love EVERYTHING about living here?

The BBQ Pit
1

I moved away from my home state of California a few years ago. I moved to an un-named state that is VERY different from L.A. This was for personal, family reasons and obligations. In the long run, I made the right decision (for now). But I cannot say I am enchanted with my new location. It’s OK, it’s not terrible, but it’s not “home”. Fortunately, I am able to return to CA fairly frequently for visits. This helps A LOT.

The bottom line is that I’m homesick. I don’t blame people who were born here for loving it. It is their home. A lot of them probably wouldn’t enjoy living anywhere else. I envy them for being able to live in the place they love.

Now, I admit, at first I bitched bitterly about my new home. I ruffled feathers. But I’ve learned, I’ve toned it down. Now I try to conceal my dislike of this place. I really try to be careful to not say anything too negative. (But I guess it’s obvious that I am chomping at the bit to visit Calif. again - that seems to irritate some people.)

When I first moved here, I annoyed some people even though I wasn’t bitching about anything at the time. (I can understand that my bitching would be irritating.) Sometimes, when some people would talk about some experience they had, I’d want to join in the conversation by relating any simular experience. But this invariably involved mentioning home. If they were talking about amusement parks, I’d mention Disneyland - my main amusement park experience. This irritated them. But what the hell else did they expect? I’d lived all my life in one place, and needless to say, most of my experiences will be set there. It’s not my fault that most of the people I met hadn’t been to Disneyland!

WHY does anyone care if I love it here or not? I made a decision to move here, for personal reasons. These reasons were NOT for the weather, the culture, or the scenery. So why do I need to somehow flatter the people who were born here, by telling them that everything here is wonderful, and better than where I grew up? I don’t think it is. It’s just my opinion, others certainly would disagree. A lot of people who are born in my new location think California is a dump. I don’t care if they think that. Fine. Stay away! Calif. doesn’t need any more lost tourists on the freeways anyway. It doesn’t offend me in the least.

So, why do some people need to be told that their little corner of the world is BETTER than anywhere else? And, why do I HAVE to love it here? Am I the only person in the world who is living in a place that they are unenthusiastic about, but still need to live there for personal reasons? I certainly doubt it. I think, as long as I don’t complain too much in front of others who live here, that’s enough. Enthusiastic praise should not be expected, or required.

2

You didn’t by chance end up in Phoenix?

3

you must be in kansas. last time i went to kansas, some of the members with me termed the smell of the state as “ass-fog” because you it was so thick and smelly you could see it. i hate that place.

4

Now now, this isn’t some guessing game, where you all try to guess where I ended up! And I want to stress - where I live is OK. I can really understand why the long-time residents like it. It has stuff going for it. (She grudgingly mutters.) But its main transgression is that it is not my home. And, IMO, it doesn’t have the appeal that my home state does. (It doesn’t have Trader Joe’s or Yosemite National Park, to list two things!) But that’s just my opinion.

I have no desire to offend the residents of this state, who LIKE living here. I understand that they like it. I just don’t understand why some of them need to get me to love every bit of it too. I won’t. I never will. The most they should expect (and what I am giving them) is that I won’t bitterly bitch about living here in front of them. I can see how that would wear thin. But LOVE it? Why do I have to love it, and act as if I am thanking God every day that I left that “cesspool” called California, to move to their perfect-in-every-way state? Give me a break! Are they so insecure, that they need this extra confirmation? What?!?

(Bear in mind, not everyone expects this. But some do.)

5

If that’s supposed to be a hint, it’s pretty obvious to me. If I’m right, I can understand how you feel.

Home is where the heart is. Enjoy what you can, go home to California when you can, and generally just make the best of it and ignore the people you live around now when they grumble about California. I’ve been fortunate to live in a lot of different places and I can appreciate what’s great about each one, even New Jersey;).

6

I’m a transplanted Midwesterner living in LA. I think it’s great. But I get annoyed by people who move here and talk about how their previous home/city/state was so much better. I understand being homesick, that happens to pretty much everybody when they move, and it happened to me. But I never bad-mouthed my new city. Because it annoys the locals.
Telling people your homesick or having a difficult time adjusting is another matter. That makes people sympathetic.

7

You’ve blown it, I’m afraid. If you came in bitching and moaning about these people’s HOME, it’ll take them years to forget it. You’re going to be “that girl from L.A. who thinks we’re all jerks and our town sucks” for years.

8

I’m assuming you’re in the Pacific Northwest somewhere, because they’re the only ones who think of California as a “dump”–everybody else in the U.S. thinks of it as FantasyLand, La La Land. Even if other Americans hate the place, even if they tell you, wide-eyed and breathless, that it’s full of dangerous lunatics, and prone to earthquakes, still you can tell they’re fascinated by it. But they’ll never characterize it as a “dump”. No, I think that’s an Oregon-Seattle Axis thing. :smiley:

And Pacific Northwesters are especially touchy when it comes to transplanted Californians, who they think are taking over all the best spots. Buying up all the real estate, sending their loopy SoCal kids to the local schools, driving the wrong way on one-way streets, complaining about the rain, these people will never blend in…

9

Okay, I’m with you. Up to a point. It’s just that…You’re homesick for LA??? Yeesh :smiley: .

  • Tamerlane ( CA Bay Area snob, who never, ever, ruffles feathers :stuck_out_tongue: )
10

I moved to St. Paul from the SF Bay Area about eight years ago, and I still miss it all the time. Particularly in winter… and mosquito season… and the rainy season… and summer… and whenever we try to find a good mexican restaurant… or a seafood place…

St. Paul is a great town, and there at tons of great reasons to be here, but it’ll never be Berkeley.

11

If I were you, I’d thank god for that. One Berkeley is almost two too many.

But yes, I am always amazed at how protective people are of their home region and how much it offends them personally if you don’t like something. There is much about the Bay Area that I don’t like (and there is much that is wonderful) but people are always shocked (SHOCKED I say!) when I mention the bad (like Berkeley and the Golden State Warriors).

I’ve lived in geographically diverse places (Bay Area, Pacific Northwest, Alaska, Hawaii) and I find that once you get down to it, anywhere you live will be 97% the same as anywhere else (kind of like how muskrats and humans share a significant portion of the same DNA), places are defined by their fringes (the other 3%) and it isn’t all going to be good.

After all, I’ve come to the conclusion that of all the places I’ve lived, Honolulu is on the bottom of places I would want to move back to.

12

i was born and raised in HELL-A. we moved out of there in 1987 and it was the best thing we ever did. we are now 3 hours northwest of hell on the central coast.

i’m curious, what exactly is it that you miss??
the smog, the traffic, the grafitti on every imaginable surface, the crime, the unfriendly paranoid people, the haphazard architecture, the threat of an 8.5 quake, the public schools, the phony people in their VERY expensive cars, the homeless, jerry dunphy , the dodgers, or NO NFL football?

wherever you are is better than that abomination.

oh shit, my brother is in town from hawaii (where he escaped to) and we have to drive down to the lovely san fernando valley this weekend (you know the place, where the mountains are invisible 300 days of the year due to the HAZE) to see him. oh boy.

wherever you are , kiss the ground.

13

[kind of a hijack]

This sort of reminds me of something I get ALL the time. I live in Denver. I do not ski. Everyone I meet feels they need to comment on this. It’s as if just because I live near a lot of ski resorts, it would be sacreligous not to take advantage of that. “How can you not LOVE to ski?! Why would you live there if you don’t want to ski?! You just haven’t been in a while. You need to go again and you’ll just fall in love with it! blah blah blah”

People are always trying to convince me that either I’ll love skiing if I just go (I’ve been! I don’t love it.) or that I need to move away so a skier can take my place since I am not appreciative of the wonderful gift of skiing that I’ve been given. Sigh. Do people in L.A. go to Disneyland every weekend? NO. Do people in Paris go to the Louvre every weekend? NO. Stop hassling me.

Uh, anyway…see, I can sorta feel your pain, yosemitebabe. Sorta.

[/kind of a hijack]

14

Well, YO, with all due respect, I have to say that my general reaction to people who move to my home state from California and then proceed to complain about the new state/obsess nostalgically about the old is to bite my tongue to refrain from rudely inviting them to move on back, and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.

Regardless of whether it is true or not, there is a real perception (at least in Montana) that Californians are far worse about this than people from any other state – bitching about how bad things are in Montana and exclaiming how much better things are “back home,” and refusing to view anything in the state in a positive light because it isn’t what they’re used to.

So I have to admit that if you were standing around with me and saying “In California we do this, in California we do that; oh, how I miss Trader Joe’s, oh, how I miss Disneyland,” you’d probably be bugging the shit out of me.

You don’t have to love where you’re at, but it might make things easier if you keep in mind that a lot of the people around you apparently do. And I see no reason why you have to continually compare the two locales. It ain’t Cali; it’s never going to be. It ain’t your home, but it’s your home for now. Maybe things would be a little better if you tried to appreciate it on its own terms, for what it is, instead of hating it for what it isn’t?

15

Hey yosemitebabe check the by-laws of the state you are in. Some of them require you not only love everything there but you must talk about how great everything is. :smiley:

16

Have you got anybody who can send you a Trader Joe’s care package? It might make you feel a bit better. I know it was one of the things I missed dreadfully when I moved from Orange County to San Mateo…fortunately, TJ’s followed me north a few months later.

17

I can’t comment on where YB is, but here in Phoenix, we do tend to get thoroughly pissed off at Californians. There’s a reason for this. In the last several years we have had so many Californians move here that the culture is being co-opted into an LA-lite.

Granted, lots of people from lots of other states have moved here too, but for the most part they seem to adapt and assimilate. A percentage of the Californians seem to be more like missionaries than transplants. They so miss their beloved home state that they try to export the “culture” here. We - at least the “we” who aren’t developers, resort managers or board of tourism members -resent this deeply.

In Phoenix’s case, there’s even more reason than in other states. California - despite its beautiful scenery, amazing coastline, industry leading technology sector and other positives - is the most socialist state in the union. Arizona is, traditionally, one of the most libertarian. That’s the reason many of us, myself included, moved here in the first place.

When the California crusaders move here and try to subvert the culture and get laws on the books that resemble those back in the dear old People’s Republic of Cali (mandatory fences on swimming pools, firearms restrictions, increased government subsidies, expanded industrial regulation, etc., etc.) it pisses us off.

I know a few California transplants. I like a few of them. Most of them seem to have been so infused with the culture they left, though, that their idea of paradise would be to turn Phoenix into a smaller version.

It’s so bad that we Arizonans tend view every Californian we meet here with a degree of suspicion until they prove they’re not a Calimissionary. It’s unfortunate, but it’s a reality.

18

Oh my! I had a feeling this topic would start a lot of interesting conversation!

For the record, when I first got here and went through my “bitching” phase, I was at a different job, and was with a different set of people. I don’t see most of those people any more.

I’m not in the Pacific Northwest, by the way, but that’s as specific as I will get.

Like I mentioned before, it isn’t everyone that has this attitude, but just some. One woman was so extreme, she kept on saying “We’ll make a local out of you”. Which would mean that I would have to drink a lot of beer, eat lots of pizza and BBQ (and I’m a vegetarian) and be completely obsessed with Football. NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. This woman was a bit skewed, even though in other ways, she was OK. She liked to trash L.A., even though she’d never been there. (She had been at the San Francisco airport once, that made her an expert on California.)

I also don’t constantly talk about “Back in California we do it this way…” But I will say, “I remember having a simular experience on the 5 freeway” or “You’re lucky - the traffic in LA is much worse” and stuff like that. I do refer to California more or less frequently. This can’t be helped. Most of my life experiences were set there. There have been times when I take off any reference to the location that a certain personal experience happened. And then someone will assume it happened locally, and say, “Oh, did you go to the store on 6th street?” And then I’ll say, “No, Brand Blvd. in Glendale, California”. So the California references come up frequently no matter what. I see no reason why that should be offensive. Often it isn’t, but sometimes it seems like it is. I’m sorry, it’s just a fact of my life. And since I frequently return to California, the CA references will still keep cropping up.

I think a lot of it is that so many of the people here are not big travelers. I have never met so many people who have never been within two states of this state. They just don’t go anywhere! I can’t get over it. Now, maybe It’s just some weird fluke that I’m meeting a lot of people that don’t go anywhere, I don’t know. But I think that they resent me mentioning this ‘exotic’ different place, since they go NO WHERE. And I don’t think they like hearing that things are different (and possibly preferable) to their little corner of the universe.

Yes, I get “Trader Joes Care Packages”. All the time! And when I return for a visit, I stock up on lots of Trader Joes products, and send them back to myself in a big UPS box. Right now I have several bags of the chocolate UFOs in my fridge, and a few other yummy things. Yeah, that helps.

What do I miss about L.A.? Well, I’m actually from the Glendale/Sunland area, which I’ve always thought was a decent area. I miss Glendale College (great ceramics department) and I miss the Glendale Galleria (new Apple Store! Woo hoo!). I miss being so close to Yosemite, and Sequoia, the beach, Descanso Gardens, and the rest. I’m so much closer to so many interesting things (in my opinion). And it’s just where I grew up - my home. Even if everyone else thought it was a dump, it would still be my HOME.

Just the other day I went on a “road trip” with my family, and we toured a scenic part of the state I currently live in. It was REALLY NICE. I am happy to find new things to like about this state, I am not closed off to any crumb of enjoyment I can find. But I’m still homesick.

19

oh , i forgot to add in my original post:

do you miss the chance to be hit head-on and incinerated by some punk who is being chased by the police in the DAILY LOS ANGELES HIGH SPEED CHASE that is being carried live by channels 2,4,5,7 9 and 13, all with their own chopper up in the sky trying to avoid each other and still get the shot of some big crash or the punk being shot by LAPD?

but to be completely honest, i love it in some sick way too
and i still get to watch most of the LA stations on cable so its like i never left.

20

In some towns, no amount of loving it will make much difference.

A family once moved to a small town with their two year-old son. Ninety-eight years later when he died these words were carved on his tombstone: “He was almost one of us.”

Okay, that’s a BS story, but those of us who have moved to small towns understand its spirit. To tell a true story, back when I lived in Reno, every shop where I worked would only hire locals to be sales reps - it was understood that no one else could develop the goodwill to maintain profitable accounts. I worked briefly for Claudia Martin, who told me that her main gripe with Reno was how outsiders were frozen out. And Claudia was Dean Martin’s daughter - I would have thought she’d be seen as royalty in that culture. Nope. I regret I didn’t keep in touch, so when Claudia died last February I didn’t know where she was buried - but I can guess where it wasn’t.