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You'll have to forgive me if this thread is more of a personal advice thread instead of the usual "X city versus Y city" or "help me find a city that matches my personality exactly" threads. So please, consider yourself forewarned.
This week, news broke about two major corruption scandals in my small hometown of Centerville, IA. I'll spare you the details, but suffice it to say one involved a local businessman cheating/exploiting the poor and another showed why the town hasn't been able to gather any economic prospects and has remained one of the most poverty stricken communities in the state for decades.
Which brings me to my current state. I feel like I'm becoming completely disillusioned with my hometown; the town where I spent my childhood, grew up, graduated high school, and where my parents still live. I'm a young man who's about to graduate from college, and had always had sort of a fantasy of going out and seeking my fortune in the big, bad world before coming back and resettling in my safe and familiar hometown. Now I find that to be less and less attractive. It's bothering me a lot to discover the dark side of the town that I grew up in and at one time thought to be the best place in the world.
My questions to you all are these:
Have any of you become disillusioned with your hometown? If you have, how so and why? If you haven't and have instead stuck with your hometown, (SWB came to the Iowa forum and discussed this recently...) what makes you do it, especially in places where the challenges of making it there are so great? Is it better sometimes to just cut your losses and sever your ties to a place completely? Can you ever find a new hometown?
I am not truly disillusioned with my own hometown of Simsbury, CT aside from the fact I can't afford to live there anymore. Housing is through the roof. You need 300 grand to get into even a basic home. And since I pay cash for my homes and don't take on a mortgage it is a safe bet I won't be living there anytime soon. :-)
I've run into the same problem you have in "adopted" communities. Medina, NY stands out like a sore thumb. Bought a house there and planned to start a small business only to find the corruption at the Village Hall and Police Dept. were stifling to say the least and a real impediment towards growth and progress. No wonder the place is dying.
Currently I live in Kansas City and it is not for me. It serves a useful purpose in that I earn a fairly good living at my current job and I can position myself to move to a community more to my liking and has a market for my proposed small business. With Medina I did just cut my losses and severed ties completely. This time around I am doing very thorough research and finding out which places will offer less trouble than a community like Medina.
I believe you can find a new hometown. Just do your homework and find which communities meet the criteria that you desire in a new home. And by all means do some research on local corruption before making a move to a community.
Interesting question. I think everyone has been disillusioned with their hometown at some point or another.
I grew up in Staten Island, New York, a strange and surprisingly provincial place that is nevertheless a part of the nation's largest city. Staten Island has an absolutely maddening inferiority complex because it is not as well-known or heavily populated as the other boroughs. It is largely suburban (though still quite dense for a suburb), it is among the few parts of NYC where you need to own a car (and thus has godawful traffic), much of its populace seems scarcely aware of the great city at its doorstep. Furthermore, while it has been the fastest growing part of the city - and, at some times, the state - during most of the past four decades, it has yet to come to terms with this and often appears to cling to an idealized version of its small-town past even while it sits near the center of the most populated region of the country, development continuing, unchecked and irrationally. It has the nation's longest average commute time and sky-high real estate prices.
In spite of this, its a good place to raise a family. The schools are decent for a big city, and the island has half a million people, so you can always find someone to relate to. New York is there and you can certainly take advantage of it if you make the effort. Even the sprawl has its limits - the island has a large chain of beautiful parks, and most people do live within walking distance of a shopping plaza and a bus stop (even if the former is kinda lame and the latter is unreliable). My family and many friends are still there and, through it all, most of my memories of my hometown are quite positive.
Now I'm 23 and I live in Chicago - I think its important for many people to spread their wings at some point and gain a foothold somewhere else. But I plan to return to New York someday. I may even return to Staten Island.
So to answer your question, yes, I've been disillusioned with my hometown and, yes, I still love it. And, yes, I think you should leave, you are at the time in life for doing such things. But should you return someday? Only you can answer that question, and you probably won't be able to until you spend some time somewhere else.
Stuff happens in every town. If you grow up thinking that your hometown is the exception you will be disapointed someday when it happens.
If I was you I'd get the heck out of IOWAY as soon as I could to experience the real world. If you still like the slow pace of life and safe streets you might be compelled to come back some day.
I think bad things happen everywhere. Maybe some towns have more corruption than others, but I'm convinced it happens everywhere.
There are a few people in this forum who seem to look at their hometowns through rose-colored glasses (I'm thinking of a couple of people who do nothing but praise Louisville and Omaha) and refuse to admit that there's anything wrong with them. I think that's where the real danger is. It's not only unhealthy but it's completely unrealistic.
My advice would be to just take it with a grain of salt and to continue to think of your hometown as being a wonderful place. It doesn't mean that it's Xanadu, but there's nothing wrong with having special, tender feelings for the town where you grew up. It's normal, it's healthy, and it's one of the things that makes America great.
The spirit of competition we have between our cities and towns towns helps make them better, and if we do find a ***** in the armor we can always do something to help fix it. In the meantime, continue to love your hometown!
No place is perfect, though nostalgia often makes us believe otherwise. Are the problems with your hometown significant enough that you couldn't be happy living there again? If not, then go back and be happy living there. Maybe run for council and try to erase the corrupt element. If the problems do add up to a sum you can't live with, move on to someplace new. You're young and can experience many new places in your lifetime. Some may be good, others bad, and one place you find may be the utopia that makes you happy.
I knew I wasn't going to be happy going back to my hometown, so I left for college and never looked back. My family soon followed. Every time I go back to visit the place I grew up I'm glad I no longer live there and I'm happy for what I've done and what my family has done to get out of there and into better situations for ourselves.
Good advice, all. I guess maybe it's just a part of this "growing up" thing I thought I was over and done with.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JMT
The spirit of competition we have between our cities and towns towns helps make them better, and if we do find a ***** in the armor we can always do something to help fix it. In the meantime, continue to love your hometown!
You inadvertently made my day. Gotta love the overactive filter. We even have a whole town in Iowa we can't talk about on here. ****. Rhymes with "hike", means "small dam".
What a great thread - your disillusionment with your hometown mirrors what I feel about mine.
I grew up in Fairfield, CT and moved to neighboring Westport when I was in middle school. Back then, it was your typical NYC suburb - upper middle class, affordable homes and friendly, down to earth suburbanites. I went away to college.
Then I came back. Small homes were torn down and mansions were rebuilt to replace them. Mercedes, Maseratis, Aston Martins, bimmers, etc are now the norm. I went back to my old high school and the student's cars were worth more than the teacher's cars. Martha Stewart recently moved out of town because she couldn't stand the pretentious attitude that her neighbors displayed [toward her] - yes, coming from MARTHA.
What happened to the modest, fiscally conservative suburban town I left 7 years ago? $500k will get you a starter home, but if you want anything decent, you're looking at some big bucks. Don't get me wrong, it's a great place to live (among the best public schools in the nation, close to NYC, on the water), but even if I wanted to, I couldn't afford it. It's sad that in my old town of block parties and neighborhood brunches, the almighty dollar is now superior to character.
I am not truly disillusioned with my own hometown of Simsbury, CT aside from the fact I can't afford to live there anymore. Housing is through the roof. You need 300 grand to get into even a basic home. And since I pay cash for my homes and don't take on a mortgage it is a safe bet I won't be living there anytime soon. :-)
I've run into the same problem you have in "adopted" communities. Medina, NY stands out like a sore thumb. Bought a house there and planned to start a small business only to find the corruption at the Village Hall and Police Dept. were stifling to say the least and a real impediment towards growth and progress. No wonder the place is dying.
Currently I live in Kansas City and it is not for me. It serves a useful purpose in that I earn a fairly good living at my current job and I can position myself to move to a community more to my liking and has a market for my proposed small business. With Medina I did just cut my losses and severed ties completely. This time around I am doing very thorough research and finding out which places will offer less trouble than a community like Medina.
I believe you can find a new hometown. Just do your homework and find which communities meet the criteria that you desire in a new home. And by all means do some research on local corruption before making a move to a community.
What do you dislike about Kansas City? I am also planning on moving shortly from E Kansas near the KC metro.
I don't think I'm neccessarily dissillusioned with Rapid City because it is a great place to grow up and a great place to live, but the educational and career opportunities are limited and it is too conservative. Everybody here kind of knows a little bit about one another which can often be bad and I don't think I can spend the rest of my life hearing the same old news about the same old people.
I'd love to come back here in the future to raise a family and retire, but I don't think there are any career opportunities here for me and I need to get out of this protective bubble.
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