Madison is Husband's hometown. It's also where we met, during junior year of college.
It's been 14 years since I've lived there. When I did live there, I had friends and could walk down State Street and meet people I knew on almost every block.
However, they, like I, were not Madison natives, living there just for college and then leaving afterwards. Now, when we go, I don't know anyone in Madison. Everyone we interact with are Husband's family and friends.
It's interesting to compare and contrast Husband's background with my own. His mother has lived in her neighborhood for 40 years, and lived her entire life in Wisconsin. Certainly she's traveled around the US and to Europe and Taiwan (with Husband and me, but that's another story). And so Husband and his brother have known their neighbors for 30+ years. The only people I have known that long are my own parents and siblings.
During Christmas week, for about 20 years now, Husband's family and three other neighbor families do a progressive dinner. Cocktails at one home, dinner at another home, everyone contributing. It's a lovely tradition that I really enjoy. And now there are three generations, as the kids from Husband's generation have gotten married and had kids.
Of the 4 families involved in the progressive dinner, 3 have only 2 offspring, for example, Husband and his brother, and one has 4 offspring. Of the families that have only 2 kids, in each family, one kid has moved away (Atlanta, Boulder, Chicago) and one has stayed in Madison. The family with 4 kids have only one kid at home and the rest have moved away.
I find this interesting because I grew up living a rather peripatetic life. That is, we moved around a lot. I was born in Missouri, moved to Baltimore while still an infant. Lived in Baltimore for 10 years, but in at least 2 different neighborhoods. Then moved to Houston for 5 years where I finished elementary school, went through junior high, and started high school. Then sophomore year we moved to Taiwan where I finished high school in a bilingual school. Went to college in Wisconsin, and now I live in Georgia where I've lived in at least 3 different neighborhoods.
That's six states (okay Taiwan isn't a state, but it's smaller than Massachusetts) in 37 years.
Contrast that with Husband living in 2 states in 37 years.
I like the thought of providing my future hypothetical children with that kind of stability. But I also appreciate the experience of living in different places, regions and different cultures (each region of the US definitely has it's own culture). This relative rootlessness has made me focus on the present and the future, because you can't go home again. And even if you do go back, that place isn't the same as when you left it. It's continued to change and grow without you because it's a living entity shaped by the people who are there now.
This is an issue for some of the refugees and immigrants I work with. Their image of their home country and original culture is frozen in time, at the moment of when they left. In an effort to "preserve their culture" in a new country and new culture, some immigrants become more conservative and old fashioned that they would have been in their home country.
But that country and culture continues to evolve, shaped by the people, politics, and economy that are still there. And so when the immigrants to back to visit, they are sometimes dismayed to find that their home country is different and that they themselves are viewed as old fashioned and out of step in some ways and Americanized in other ways. Because even as they try to resist changing, they have been living the in the US and have had to adapt their behaviors and thinking in response to their American home.
Complaining Employee was a great example. She used to disdain Iranian-Americans for their habits of drinking bottled water. But last time she went to visit, she found herself being cautious only had Iranian clothes from 5 years ago when she left. And her cellphone was hopelessly out of date because it didn't have this or that feature that everyone in Iran now takes for granted.
It's rather ironic that Iran, supposedly a backward and oppressive Muslim theocracy, was looking at this Americanized Iranian as being the one who was conservative in some
ways.
So the saying that you can never go home again is certainly true. And it's something everyone has to learn on their own through their own experience.
Madison is where I lived one phase of my life and my home now is Atlanta. Because this is where I live my daily life. And have my house, where I keep my yarn and pottery :).
Husband and I visit Madison. Husband and I live in Atlanta.
Showing posts with label moving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label moving. Show all posts
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Brothers on the Move
Brother One and Brother Two are 2 living examples of this NY Times article about Gen Y's mobility.
In August Brother Two moved from Baltimore to New York City. This weekend Brother One will be moving to Los Angeles. Brother Two found a job in NYC before going. Brother One's first task in LA will be to find a job. They are 31 and 30 years old, smack in the middle of the demographic discussed. Both are unmarried, not dating, no pets, just themselves. They have absolutely nothing tying them to Baltimore or Atlanta, so why not move?
It's such an American thing to do. If there's no opportunity here, move on.
What Do Young Jobseekers Want? (Something Other Than the Job)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/fashion/06Work.html?em&ex=1189224000&en=cb121f533362cd17&ei=5087%0A
EARLY this summer, Joshua J. Pelton decided that he was meant to live in Orlando, Fla. So he quit his sales job in Detroit, packed his car with all the belongings that fit, put the rest in storage, and drove southeast daydreaming about sundrenched winters and packed nightclubs.
“I didn’t have much of a plan, but I knew I wanted to be here,” said Mr. Pelton, 24, who, in his emphasis on where he lives rather than what he does there, is typical of his generation.
Time was when applying for a first job meant papering the country with résumés and migrating wherever the best offer might lead. But this latest generation of graduates has already shown itself to be a peripatetic bunch — traveling more widely and moving farther from home for college.
Add to that the emphasis that Gen Y puts on quality of life — perhaps more than any group that has come before — and it would follow that Gen Y looks for work differently, too.
“To our generation, it doesn’t make sense to have a great job in a crummy city,” said Mark Van Dyke, 25, describing his decision to move three years ago from the suburbs of Chicago to Bellingham, Wash., where he worked low-paying retail jobs before finding one in marketing, at Logos Bible Software. It was all worth it, he said, because his new hometown is “on the Pacific Ocean but driving distance from snowboarding on Mount Baker.”
Sixty-five percent of 1,000 respondents aged 24 to 35 who were asked by the Segmentation Company, a division of the marketing consultant Yankelovich, said they preferred to “look for a job in the place that I would like to live,” rather than “look for the best job I can find, the place where it is located is secondary.”
They also told researchers that places must be safe, clean and green. The most-cited quality was tidiness and attractiveness (78 percent) followed by “will allow me to lead the life I want to lead” (77 percent).
Urban leaders are increasingly courting young workers, because as baby boomers retire, Gen Y will have to fill the gap. Across the country, cities are scrambling to become the place that recent grads want to be.
In the last decade only 14 urban areas nationwide saw more of these workers move in than move out: Las Vegas; Austin, Tex.; Phoenix; Atlanta; Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; Charlotte, N.C.; Salt Lake City; Portland, Ore.: Denver; Orlando; Nashville; Dallas-Fort Worth; Miami-Fort Lauderdale; and Greensboro-Winston Salem, N.C.
How to join that list? “That’s the question all our members are asking,” said Carol Coletta, the president and chief executive of CEOs for Cities, a Chicago-based association of urban leaders.
Her group financed the Yankelovich study, titled “Attracting College-Educated Young Adults to Cities.” Its advice? Spread the word that you are, in the words of the report, “clean, safe and green.” Those qualities won’t seal the deal, but without them, this age group won’t even look.
This philosophy is leading cities to market themselves aggressively to young workers. Orlando, for instance, paid for its own investigation to find out what they want. The results convinced the city council to authorize $1.1 billion in July to build an arts center, an event center and to upgrade a sports arena.
Boston’s mayor set up a task force to poll young adults about their needs, and intends to have their answers inform his development plan. Memphis and Philadelphia, in turn, have created programs (called Mpact in Memphis and Innovation Philadelphia) that woo college students and young professionals, in the hope that they will feel socially welcome and politically connected, and stay.
Those who set their sights on a particular city, however, are not always looking for something that can be built or marketed. Many choose on a gut feeling.
Joy Portella had a “life epiphany” about two years ago, at 33, and decided to leave Manhattan, even though it is the center of her profession: international development. If she were deciding on just a “career move,” she said, she would have stayed in New York or moved to Washington, D.C. Instead she chose a counterintuitive path and headed for Seattle.
Her move was “liberating,” she said. “Before, all my moves had been initiated by things I had to do — jobs or academic programs.” She decamped to Seattle out of desire alone, and now has a job she loves as the director of communications for Mercy Corps.
Ms. Portella knew little of Seattle when she decided to make her move. But she did have a job offer, having spent a year searching from 3,000 miles away.
That is not true of everyone. Mr. Pelton arrived in Orlando with no job prospects. He had sent out résumés while still in Detroit, but received no response. “I found that it’s much easier to find a job when you are in that city,” he said. He now works in group sales for the Walt Disney World Resort, and said the city fulfilled his hope that he could reinvent himself there.
“I can do my regular job, then I can go be a pirate at Magic Kingdom, or watch fireworks every night of the week if I want,” he said. “Growing up in Michigan and staying there, I had an image. I was the good quiet kid who did well in school and was always responsible. Here, I like to be a little wild on the weekends and go to the clubs.”
Casey Blalock, 24, is about to take the same leap any day now, moving from San Francisco to Seattle without a net. “I’m not looking to reinvent myself or find the meaning to life by moving,” she wrote in an e-mail message. “But I do think I’ll get to know myself better. I plan on finding a new job, volunteering, cooking, reading, hiking and enjoying a crumpet down at Pike Place Fish Market.”
If it doesn’t work out, she knows she can always set her sights elsewhere. Because an age group mobile enough to pick up and move once is just as likely to do so again.
Alan Caudill, now 31, moved from Pittsburgh to San Francisco five years ago, when the Internet start-up that employed him was floundering and he and his wife of two months realized they had never loved Pittsburgh.
“San Francisco culture was more us,” he said. “I haven’t been to an Applebee’s, eaten fast food or drank a Coors Light since we moved here (and I’m finally able to get a real burrito).”
While Mr. Caudill has found a job he enjoys, in software management at another start-up, he has also found that he enjoys the adventure of starting anew.
“We’re thinking of doing it again,” he said. “In the next few years we’re debating moving either elsewhere in the country — we love D.C., and Manhattan, and have family in Cleveland — or Europe or Latin America.”
In August Brother Two moved from Baltimore to New York City. This weekend Brother One will be moving to Los Angeles. Brother Two found a job in NYC before going. Brother One's first task in LA will be to find a job. They are 31 and 30 years old, smack in the middle of the demographic discussed. Both are unmarried, not dating, no pets, just themselves. They have absolutely nothing tying them to Baltimore or Atlanta, so why not move?
It's such an American thing to do. If there's no opportunity here, move on.
What Do Young Jobseekers Want? (Something Other Than the Job)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/fashion/06Work.html?em&ex=1189224000&en=cb121f533362cd17&ei=5087%0A
EARLY this summer, Joshua J. Pelton decided that he was meant to live in Orlando, Fla. So he quit his sales job in Detroit, packed his car with all the belongings that fit, put the rest in storage, and drove southeast daydreaming about sundrenched winters and packed nightclubs.
“I didn’t have much of a plan, but I knew I wanted to be here,” said Mr. Pelton, 24, who, in his emphasis on where he lives rather than what he does there, is typical of his generation.
Time was when applying for a first job meant papering the country with résumés and migrating wherever the best offer might lead. But this latest generation of graduates has already shown itself to be a peripatetic bunch — traveling more widely and moving farther from home for college.
Add to that the emphasis that Gen Y puts on quality of life — perhaps more than any group that has come before — and it would follow that Gen Y looks for work differently, too.
“To our generation, it doesn’t make sense to have a great job in a crummy city,” said Mark Van Dyke, 25, describing his decision to move three years ago from the suburbs of Chicago to Bellingham, Wash., where he worked low-paying retail jobs before finding one in marketing, at Logos Bible Software. It was all worth it, he said, because his new hometown is “on the Pacific Ocean but driving distance from snowboarding on Mount Baker.”
Sixty-five percent of 1,000 respondents aged 24 to 35 who were asked by the Segmentation Company, a division of the marketing consultant Yankelovich, said they preferred to “look for a job in the place that I would like to live,” rather than “look for the best job I can find, the place where it is located is secondary.”
They also told researchers that places must be safe, clean and green. The most-cited quality was tidiness and attractiveness (78 percent) followed by “will allow me to lead the life I want to lead” (77 percent).
Urban leaders are increasingly courting young workers, because as baby boomers retire, Gen Y will have to fill the gap. Across the country, cities are scrambling to become the place that recent grads want to be.
In the last decade only 14 urban areas nationwide saw more of these workers move in than move out: Las Vegas; Austin, Tex.; Phoenix; Atlanta; Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; Charlotte, N.C.; Salt Lake City; Portland, Ore.: Denver; Orlando; Nashville; Dallas-Fort Worth; Miami-Fort Lauderdale; and Greensboro-Winston Salem, N.C.
How to join that list? “That’s the question all our members are asking,” said Carol Coletta, the president and chief executive of CEOs for Cities, a Chicago-based association of urban leaders.
Her group financed the Yankelovich study, titled “Attracting College-Educated Young Adults to Cities.” Its advice? Spread the word that you are, in the words of the report, “clean, safe and green.” Those qualities won’t seal the deal, but without them, this age group won’t even look.
This philosophy is leading cities to market themselves aggressively to young workers. Orlando, for instance, paid for its own investigation to find out what they want. The results convinced the city council to authorize $1.1 billion in July to build an arts center, an event center and to upgrade a sports arena.
Boston’s mayor set up a task force to poll young adults about their needs, and intends to have their answers inform his development plan. Memphis and Philadelphia, in turn, have created programs (called Mpact in Memphis and Innovation Philadelphia) that woo college students and young professionals, in the hope that they will feel socially welcome and politically connected, and stay.
Those who set their sights on a particular city, however, are not always looking for something that can be built or marketed. Many choose on a gut feeling.
Joy Portella had a “life epiphany” about two years ago, at 33, and decided to leave Manhattan, even though it is the center of her profession: international development. If she were deciding on just a “career move,” she said, she would have stayed in New York or moved to Washington, D.C. Instead she chose a counterintuitive path and headed for Seattle.
Her move was “liberating,” she said. “Before, all my moves had been initiated by things I had to do — jobs or academic programs.” She decamped to Seattle out of desire alone, and now has a job she loves as the director of communications for Mercy Corps.
Ms. Portella knew little of Seattle when she decided to make her move. But she did have a job offer, having spent a year searching from 3,000 miles away.
That is not true of everyone. Mr. Pelton arrived in Orlando with no job prospects. He had sent out résumés while still in Detroit, but received no response. “I found that it’s much easier to find a job when you are in that city,” he said. He now works in group sales for the Walt Disney World Resort, and said the city fulfilled his hope that he could reinvent himself there.
“I can do my regular job, then I can go be a pirate at Magic Kingdom, or watch fireworks every night of the week if I want,” he said. “Growing up in Michigan and staying there, I had an image. I was the good quiet kid who did well in school and was always responsible. Here, I like to be a little wild on the weekends and go to the clubs.”
Casey Blalock, 24, is about to take the same leap any day now, moving from San Francisco to Seattle without a net. “I’m not looking to reinvent myself or find the meaning to life by moving,” she wrote in an e-mail message. “But I do think I’ll get to know myself better. I plan on finding a new job, volunteering, cooking, reading, hiking and enjoying a crumpet down at Pike Place Fish Market.”
If it doesn’t work out, she knows she can always set her sights elsewhere. Because an age group mobile enough to pick up and move once is just as likely to do so again.
Alan Caudill, now 31, moved from Pittsburgh to San Francisco five years ago, when the Internet start-up that employed him was floundering and he and his wife of two months realized they had never loved Pittsburgh.
“San Francisco culture was more us,” he said. “I haven’t been to an Applebee’s, eaten fast food or drank a Coors Light since we moved here (and I’m finally able to get a real burrito).”
While Mr. Caudill has found a job he enjoys, in software management at another start-up, he has also found that he enjoys the adventure of starting anew.
“We’re thinking of doing it again,” he said. “In the next few years we’re debating moving either elsewhere in the country — we love D.C., and Manhattan, and have family in Cleveland — or Europe or Latin America.”
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