When
I was a kid and in love with horses, I wanted to live in
the country, and have a horse, and a farm, and a pack of dogs or so,
and a
vegetable garden.
For
now, I think I like city living. I’m still learning about
different kinds of cities, though...how to differentiate between them.
And
different parts of the world. Even just the country.
Weirdly,
I feel more widely traveled in Mongolia than in my own
country. The only states in the States I feel like I can say I know at
all are
I
know enough to know a little bit about what I do and don’t
like. I like living in an apartment in Oakland, in Pittsburgh. I
wouldn’t like
living in California.
I wouldn’t like, say, comparable Sacramento
apartments.
On paper the cities have similarities. Pittsburgh was named most
livable city a
few years ago, but Sacramento’s not far behind, at number
five on the list. But
for me, there’s no getting around the fact that downtown Sacramento
apartments
are still in Sacramento, which is still somewhere in California, which
gives me
the heebie-jeebies. Like, it’s a nice place to visit but I
wouldn’t want to
live there. Almost nobody I’ve ever met in the state is
really motivated to do
anything – nobody my age, anyway. There’s a lot of
drugs going on, a lot of
sitting around half-heartedly considering community college, a lot of
shitty
amateur bands. I wonder how they eat half the time, considering how
much more
expensive it is than here.
I ought to, and I want to, explore a lot more places, for sure, before I start deciding on the kind of place that I do like best. Sometimes I worry about ending up in the wrong place. But I think I’ll know the wrong place if I’m ever there.
