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[glowdart]

I have connections to my hometown's region, but I would never in a million years want to move back to my hometown or most areas nearby even.  My hometown sounds in many ways like the Philly that Benton describes, and that is, in many ways, part of the problem with going home.  Yes, relatives are still there and it would be nice to see them more regularly, but I just loathe parts of the culture.  I love other parts of it, but I feel like a fish out of water when I go home these days.  I've been away too long and grown too much in different directions, and most of the people there have never left.  It's like a world has passed on without me and I no longer know the middle history even though I still speak the codes and have the cadences.  Those codes and cadences do not make up for a decade's worth of lost information and experiences.     

Of course, I never really felt at home in the other places I lived either, except for collegetown, but I know that living in collegetown as a professor would be an entirely different experience than living there as a college student.

TT town doesn't feel like home yet, but I know that I take a long time to put down roots and often resist doing so because I know that I will be moving on soon.  This tendency -- to NOT root because I have always been someplace temporarily -- is something that I am finding hard to break and overcome.  I could, in theory, be here for 30 years.  That is a foreign concept to me.   

[smtan]

The author describes my experience as an immigrant.

[dolljepopp]

I've lived in the midwest, the northeast, the deep south and Europe. 
[...]
 

mended, I think we're the same person.

Strange I've not noticed before now...

---

When people ask me where I'm from (and I have reason to believe they don't mean which country), I say Minnesota, though that's not technically true.

I was born in the south. Except for a year or so somewhere out west while I was an infant, we lived in a suburb of a big southern city until I was nine-and-a-half. Then we moved to a medium sized southern city about couplfe of hundred miles away. I went to college at a state Uni a couple of hours from there. My parents moved to a tiny town in the middle of nowhere in another southern state the week after I left for college. After graduation I was nomadic, living in a variety of southern cities and towns for about four years before landing in Minneapolis. My parents now live in yet another southern town, where I know no one but them, and my sibling in another still.

I had always hated hated hated the south -- the heat, the hayfever, the obsession with the Confederacy, the "Praise Jesus"-ness, etc. Minnesota was and is far from perfect, but I quickly grew to love it and it is the only place I've lived up to now that I describe or have described as "home". I was there longer than I've lived anywhere else (nearly fifteen years) and went through three major life-changing events while there. It will always be "home", even though I do not expect ever to live there again. To the extent that I have a regionally-identifiable accent, it is Minnesotan. Ja sure, you betcha. When I thought I would probably have to move back to the US, it was the primary area I planned to focus on for a job. It was the only place I thought I could move back to and the only one I was emotionally willing to consider.

But I've been gone eight-and-a-half years and it isn't really home anymore. For that matter, neither is the US, even though I've only been in Europe three-and-a-half years (this time -- I had an earlier, shorter stint a few years back). For two months I've been in a new city and country and in many ways it feels like home already, even though I only speak two of the four most common languages (and I don't speak the most common one). My soon-to-be-wife is also a transplant, but she has been here fifteen years and admits that England isn't home to her anymore, so I expect we'll stay here. We talk about retiring some day to Oxford or Stratford, and we might, but the strange little kingdom in which we are now building a life together has many charms.

[entwife]

Ahh... I loved the area where I grew up, yet the actual home never felt like home (which perhaps had something to do with 4 people living in a tiny 1-bedroom apartment). Then the "development" came and the area was ruined... My family is there, but I feel sad when I  go back and see the destruction of what used to be beautiful...

Then I moved 8 time zones for grad school... it was tolerable, but that's about it.

Another 3 time zones to the first job place... did not get there until I was 30+, but it was where I discovered what it feels like to be home and what if feels like to be happy. I could drive around for hours in a state of complete bliss. Unfortunately, the department was toxic and administration insane, so I told myself that the development was ruining the place anyway... and it sort of was ... and I moved, and as I drove away from the house I sold (the first house anyone in my family owned) I think I died.

I've been in the current place for 3 years, I have the most amazing colleagues and even wonderful administration. But I still feel like a "displaced person from the State of First Job"; occasionally I feel mild liking of some aspects of being here, but for the most part I am miserable and work 24/7 in a crazy hope to go back ... but there are hardly any jobs where I want to be... So I am trying to grow where I am, but ...  People in general see it as a "desirable" place, but it is way too developed for my liking.

[normative_]

After a number of relocations, across North America and Europe, I've finally found a place to call home. It's far from where I was born and raised and did my first degree, but the following ingredients contribute to that feeling:

1. I'm more open to investing time and energy and emotion into my social life. After a string of limited-term contracts, I now have tenure. I can relax and go out with friends rather than spending an extra hour at the office preparing the next paper, or the next job application. Effort counts.

2. I'm no longer in a long distance relationship, as I was for a long time. That deals a double blow to your ability to forge social ties: you're either in the office or away. You're not really in a position to give, much less receive, in social affairs.

3. The prevailing values and attitudes of the local population are not identical, but compatible with my own. For me, this remains important to identifying with the people with whom and the place in which I live. To some degree. It is certainly enough.

4. The locals, and not just the ones at the university, are approachable and friendly. I have to take initiative in making contact, but people are open. I've seen it otherwise (the article's author notes that this wouldn't even be possible in his home town of Philly, or at least in his neighbourhood), and it supports a wall between you and your environment if it exists.

5. The atmosphere at the university encourages you to be yourself, whatever that is. There is little posturing and posing and pretending to be something you're not. The key part is the acceptance that goes with that attitude. It's not a famous university, so no one is putting on airs.

6. There is a good quality of life here. I wasn't expecting it when I first took the position, as it's different from what I would have envisaged as a great location, above all different from what I'd become accustomed to after my initial degree, but I've been pleasantly surprised.

7. I'm perfectly aware that my identity is not a manichean choice, but that I have a layered personality and identity. The circumstances of my childhood and youth, where I grew up, informs many of my core values. But I left and moved around and adopted things here and there that I liked and valued. I was born and raised somewhere, but I'm from a variety of places. And now my home is ______.

I probably only go 'home' to visit friends and relatives twice in a decade. I don't really miss anything. I carry the most important parts around with me all the time.

But there are times I would give almost anything to 'get a decent bagel', and a few other items.


The golden thread, I think, is whether you and your prospective new home are open to each other and are ready to invest in that relationship, and whether that actually works. The author of the article readily admits that he lives in a fairly self-contained world focused on Philly, even though he's been in Michigan for 9 years.

I actually find that sad. I fully understand Radar's point, but somehow the author's presentation has a different tone to it. The lack of friends, particularly

[keineidee]

2. I'm no longer in a long distance relationship, as I was for a long time. That deals a double blow to your ability to forge social ties: you're either in the office or away. You're not really in a position to give, much less receive, in social affairs.

This is a great point. I think a LDR has/had been a significant factor in my sense of alienation from my current place. I had been involved w/ someone for 5 years at the old place ("home") and then went long distance for a couple more after I came here. I was always planning that next cross-country trip, and/or wondering if/when the ex would join me here as originally planned.

I finally broke it off about 6 mos. ago. Have made more of an effort since then to connect to both people and place. Not committed exactly, but "dating" this potential homeplace ... even if everyone I know seems to be in a couple, many with kids.

[temporaryname]

<snip>

4. The locals, and not just the ones at the university, are approachable and friendly. I have to take initiative in making contact, but people are open. I've seen it otherwise (the article's author notes that this wouldn't even be possible in his home town of Philly, or at least in his neighbourhood), and it supports a wall between you and your environment if it exists.

<snip>

This reminds me of a mild double-take I had when I was reading the article. I lived in Philadelphia for a few years, and I found the locals, though perhaps less so in South Philly than elsewhere, to be wonderfully approachable (even despite the "Welcome to Philadelphia, now go home!" exterior you see once in a while). Different people work in different ways, I suppose.