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This was pretty much my experience as well. I think that as a tourist or recent transplant to Phoenix, the desert climate seems exotic. This is especially true if you come from a place without any mountains. Over time, it becomes less exotic and more normal, to where it just loses its appeal.
When I first moved there, my cousin and uncle were visiting from South Carolina, and my cousin was complaining about how brown Arizona was, saying how he didn't understand why anyone would actually choose to live there. I disagreed, stating that the desert had a beauty of its own. However, after living there awhile, it wore on me and I needed to be somewhere with more greenery.
By the end, I wasn't noticing the majestic sunsets or the mountains. I was noticing how everything was brown, with ugly cinder block fences. I didn't appreciate how all the streets were linear and spaced one mile apart, on a grid. I felt like there was nothing but tract homes until you hit an intersection at the end of each mile, where there would be a grocery store. Just felt so generic to me.
Yeah, that's totally how I feel about the desert as well. At first it was exotic, exciting, and uniquely beautiful, but now I am just so tired of it. Also, I live on the border and at first the Hispanic/Mexican culture seemed sort of exotic and interesting as well. And there are some things that I really like about the culture here but, now, I just want to live somewhere that feels a little more familiar. Here it just never feels like "home" to me.
Yep. I moved from the Twin Cities, MN to El Paso, TX. I think I realized El Paso wasn't right for me the second or third day after moving! And and all these years later I'm still here and still don't want to be!
Just curious....what's keeping you from moving back to Minnesota?
I regretted our move from Chicago to fairfield county CT for a long time. Been here 5 years now and have started to accept it for a lot of reasons. The major regret is we are a family with kids that lived very close to grandma. I think in 5 years we have had a babysitter 4 times. The first two charged $15 an hour! (Even though we are in CT it's like a NYC burb) we miss the extra family and support system we had. But after moving into our 3rd house in 5 years we finally found a great neighborhood that I know I can rely on when I really need it. We also had no idea when we moved out here we would eventually have another child, this one with a language disability. The town we are in happens to have its own special needs type pre school and a wonderful school system. In the long run maybe we were supposed to end up here. I try to look at it like that. All the positive things we have found here that we may have not had back where we were. It took me 5 years to get to this point so be proactive, make some changed if your unhappy, but like someone else said don't let the movers remorse over take you.
Always...for a while, usually 9-12 months under the best of circumstances. This includes a number of region-region moves in the US and a move to Denmark 19 years ago. I've always ended up happy, far away from my boyhood home in New England.
I knew it was a mistake about 6 months after I moved from NYC to northern Indiana. I moved because my ex-wife insisted there were no jobs for her in the NYC area and her first offer was in northern Indiana??!! Once out here, we were far away from all our family and friends, and she ended up hating her job and resigning a year or so later. Before we knew it we had kids, and even today I'm scratching my head whenever I am visiting with my family and old friends, why am I in Indiana?
No ocean, no mountains, little wilderness, I can live with those things... but most of all not having family here sucks. I have learned a lot and shared what I've learned with others since. Most of all, unless you have dysfunctional relationships with your family, don't move far away from them. There is something to be said for feeling connected to the land, wherever you spent significant time growing up/being with friends. It's an awesome thing to travel and experience the world, but doing so while maintaining a home base where your family and friends are is a great idea.
I moved from SF to NYC at my employer's expense. Probably a mistake, but it was ok in NYC. Then I moved from NYC back to MN where I'm from. That was a big mistake. Then I moved to Atlanta from MN... an even worse mistake. Now I'm in the Chicago area, which is a little better, but still not really where I want to be.
Why was ATL a worse mistake? -asks the person relocating to Atlanta from the Midwest in 4 weeks.
My husband & I moved to the Olympic Peninsula of Washington 4 years ago from Southern California. I was a SoCal native. We didn't know anyone when we moved here. We had visited here on vacation. We wanted to retire here. We left SoCal because it had become too expensive to retire there, because our family & friends had left or died off, our only child had left, and it was not the same California that we had lived in & loved. However, we are very isolated here & neither of us have made friends, although we have tried hard. I was outright shunned at work and in the neighborhood. I stay in the house now. It is very lonely. Have never felt like this before. So I guess that I do regret this move, although we really had no choice, economically. I looked into meetup.com and all groups were very far away so that was not feasible.
I'll talk to you directly. We would love to live in CA, but we have a large family and couldn't afford a home out there. YIKES! I don't know how families do it out there unless they have salaries in the upper 3 digits.
Gee....I can relate to everything you're saying. However, I've only been here a month and a half.
We almost moved to PHX, but as it got closer, I just started to have an awful gnawing pit-of-the-stomach feeling. Both times I had visited PHX, it just seemed to me to be so brown and ugly (I loved the mountains though). All the cinder-block fences and the suffocating heat of the summer sun... both times I said to myself, "I wouldn't want to live here." Somehow the lure of snowless winters caught me and my husband almost took a job there. I am so glad we pulled the plug on that move.
*Note: I am not saying that PHX IS ugly. The desert landscape has its own beauty. It's just not my thing. For me beautiful = lush greenery.
P.S. I am going to be doing a long distance relocation in a month and even though the place I am relocating to is beautiful, and even though I am choosing to move, I know that I will still experience many highs and lows, and much second-guessing of our decision. We have a ton of family and close connections where we currently live, so I know there will be grieving for me, too. (((hugs)))
When you move, there is always, always something you have to "give up" in the old place. You can't change without leaving things behind--that's the point of change. However, on paper and philosophically, it's easier to say, harder to live through it. After six or seven major moves, depending on how you count 'em, I can assure you, OP, that moving is a balancing act--getting more of what you want in one place, weighing things, etc. to come up with the right balance.
You have to remember that there was something that drew you to Arizona in the first place, perhaps the same thing that drew me to Arizona, too. Maybe, since you're so new to the state, it would be best to focus on the positive such as what drew you to one of the most ruggedly beautiful states in the US. Moreover, you've only live in Arizona for a few weeks, which is hardly enough time to feel the place out. It's hard to pick up the vibe of a city and/or state after only six weeks of living there, especially a relatively "young" state like Arizona that's still growing exponentially and developing a unique identity of its own.
Also, try to recall why it was you left Ohio in the first place. What was it about Ohio that drove you out--the weather, economy, culture, scenery, etc.? Once you identify and compartmentalize that, you may better appreciate your new home, which will help you move forward in your adjustment.
Even if you can't identify anything you like about Arizona because you've already become bitter towards the state and/or you've made up your mind that your move was a "mistake" and that you're eventually moving back to Ohio, look at what you can derive from your experience in Arizona--something, anything. Then, you're there for a reason. It's better to feel you're there for a reason than no reason at all. Everything in life will teach you a grand lesson, if you can identify and understand the underlying reasons for your "mistake," then you've gained something from the ordeal.
Remember, if given the choice, most people will choose stagnation over change, even potentially positive ones, since change is very threatening to our being. If you move back to Ohio, you're going to be, in effect, choosing stagnation over change, which, in this case, is Arizona. If you arrive at that realization after you've returned to Ohio, then I think returning would prove to be an even bigger mistake in the end than staying in Arizona.
It takes a strong constitution to move and adapt to life in a new, different place. Not saying you don't have that, but I don't think you've given it enough time. As someone who just recently moved back to Southern California in August after living in the Scottsdale area for two years, I can assure that Arizona is an easy place to meet people and make friends because just about everyone is a transplant/newcomer, although it's harder to "keep" those friends, so to speak, since it's such a transient/revolving-door state. Put yourself out there, get involved, strike up conversation and introduce yourself to people everyplace you go, etc. If you do that, you'll make friends, perhaps really good ones, and develop a strong social support network before you know it.
On a final note, and this is Arizona specific--most people in Arizona are very positive and upbeat and aren't particularly drawn to those with a pessimistic attitude or negative energy/aura, common among people from the Northeast and Great Lakes states. People in Arizona also have little tolerance for complaining, too, as people in the West are more likely to internalize conflict than let whatever unfiltered, uncensored thought or complaint that hits the brain come out of the mouth. Just food for thought. My advice for you--avoid complaining and look on the bright side. Try to learn optimism, if you can. Easier said than done, but certainly possible. Best of luck.
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