As much as I love coastal California — an area of the world where I spent the past six years of my life by my own choice, because I wanted to live there so badly — it feels so refreshing to be away from there!
I hate generalizing and I usually avoid doing it and try to be very careful when I do draw “blanket” conclusions about people or places or situations… But I think there’s something very stifling or maybe somewhat “artificial” or too “tame” about coastal-big-town California. I’m not able to pin-point it or explain it clearly in words, yet: it’s still just a feeling but it’s a sensation that has been growing on me for a while now, probably even before last summer and that trip in Colorado.
On a very personal level, the deepest connections and friendships I’ve made during the past six years living in coastal California have been, indeed, with persons who aren’t originally from there (apart from only one or two notable exceptions): they’re all, like me, people who have lived in several parts of the world and chosen to move to that part of California, at least temporarily, for specific professional and/or personal reasons. So they’re all people who have grown up and experienced environments and realities that are very different from coastal-big-town California: maybe “tougher” than that part of California, if I could summarize it in just one word.
Maybe it’s the lack of winter, since coastal California really only has three seasons (spring, summer, autumn)? [I am fascinated by, and partly agree with, Montesquieu’s theory of how climate/environment shapes people and cultures.] Or maybe it’s too much wealth? Or wealth spread too unevenly? Or “too much of a good thing”, as one of my older friends/mentors, who’s originally from the East Coast, put it?!?
I’m not sure, yet, what it is exactly, but getting away feels really good: a change I definitely needed now.
Despite the long tiring day driving in winter conditions that I had long forgotten, I feel refreshed and still liberated and empowered by this move, this step, this decision. At least for now.
The Little Prince and the Fox 