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It's funny for me because I think of Oahu as so much like Los Angeles! When I go there I have to flee back to Maui after a couple of days. To hear you say you are on Oahu and experiencing island fever - my goodness, it would be where I go to be ready to come back to my smaller, quieter island.
Another idea -
Have that party, and start your ISLAND FEVER cash jar. Decorate it to look like a medicine bottle. Have a garage sale, and put all the proceeds in your jar. Or take things to a consignment store. Have a bake sale. Do whatever you can to raise money for your jar funds. Then take a trip off island, even if it is only for a couple of days, and without the kids. I see that airfare to Seattle and Portland is lower right now.
Or -
Do a house swap with someone. There are websites and groups all about this. You trade homes with someone else, often you also trade use of cars too, although I'm not so sure I'd do that. You still have to raise your airfare to somewhere else, but your cost of living is much less for the trip and you have a nice (hopefully) home with everything you need while you are there. Being in a home will make the trip more intensely like that location, and not like a hotel. Pick a place that has something happening during that week - a jazz festival or rodeo or whatever. Or go to the snow country. Someone there will have all the snow gear and you won't have to rent it.
Are there any places on Oahu where it feels like somewhere else? Movie theaters, museums? What is your comfort zone and can you make it in your house? Can you call and chat with your friends on the mainland so they won't seem so far away?
I can go decades without going to the mainland but I'm sure loads of folks on the mainland can go decades without flying to Hawaii so it all works out.
Island Fever is simply a lack of passion.....I know people won't believe that, but where I live, I usually drive with 60-minute radius and that's it. That's how it is for most people in America, they don't drive as far as they think. It's all psychological. If I go further, I fly, except for the odd 3-hour drive to the mountains, which you can do with an island hop.
To cure Island Fever, you can either:
1. start a collection jar as mentioned and keep dreaming, which will actually make your Island Fever worse while you are dreaming, make you feel more powerless, which is how you are actually feeling right now (Island Fever is really a condition of your restless spirit which requires purpose
2. Get passions that are all-consuming that you are involved with right where you are, that make you proud of being where you are, proud to make a difference, or to be involved in an acitivity that can mainly take place there: Reforestation, surfing, hiking, alien-species removal, trash issues, coral reef issues, marine life issues, sailing, kayaking, beach clean-up, tourism spear-heading, kite-surfing, swimming, visitor education, local schools quality, astronomy, island crafts exported.....need I go on?
What lights your fire? What, at age 80 or 90, would have made you proud to have done that made a difference? What do you see as your uniqueness, that thing you would do or be the best at or touched the most with? At your funeral, what do you want said about you, that "This person made such a difference with...xxx....was so involved with.....xxx....and forever touched those around..."
What if the rest of the planet was the same as where you are? There's an old saying, " wherever you go, there you are." Sit down with a pad and pen and right your dream list, the list of what you'd love to be, the difference you'd love to make. Don't settle for a ho-hum life. What if this is really just a lack of purpose?
But when that big old Hawaiian L1011 made the final turn into HNL, I had this sense of euphoria, a feeling, that if I could bottle and sell, would make me a millionare overnight.
And the other feeling, when I leave, is just as emotional.
I guess I just don't understand "Island Fever". I'm 70 years old and I've lived in Central Ohio all my life. 98% of my life I've never been more than 50 miles from home. The big exceptions were almost all trips by flying - not driving.
I think that's true for a lot of people; up until recently, most people never (or rarely) traveled far from their hometowns. I traveled some when I lived in upstate NY, took some long car trips, but I don't miss them. Been there, done that. It'll take me a while to exhaust the possibilities of just this island, then there are five more. That'll keep me going for a while!
I think some people just get kind of freaked knowing they're on a little island, even if they'd never go much of anywhere anyway. Maybe deep down they don't actually like it there, and are looking for a good excuse to leave. Maybe they don't want to admit that the weather can kind of suck (hot in summer, wet in winter, humid all the time), the bugs and mold can drive you crazy, it's hard to make friends in a new place, commodities can be hard to come by, etc. We often don't want to admit that we simply made a mistake; if we can blame it on "island fever" then it's really not our fault for failing to research sufficiently or making a bad decision, after all, no one can predict that they will suffer from island fever, right?
Hawaii does not have everything, in fact it has nothing, except for beautiful nature. I miss pretty much everything wehad on the mainland-there is no good food here, on Maui. we could not find even an ok Chinese resutaurant. it is all crap. Pizza is crap too. I fall asleep every night dreaming of $1/slice NY pizza, I crave it so much! I used to eat sushi almost every day-now I never do, they are rediculously expensive here. We used to go to Trader Joes and buy organic groceries, everything Organic, so cheap. Now we cant afford anything, we shop only in Costco, and mostly eat $8 chickens, they are the cheapest. I did not buy anything organic since I got here-Costco does not even have fat free milk. Bread is $5 in costco. It is not only about nature. People get island fever because they miss their mainland life, everyday things they cannot do here, like buy good and cheap chinese take out. not go to crappy panda express...Also, people dont visit you as often-when we lived in NY, we always had friends coming over from other states-they either drove or flew, frequently, and we used to fly a lot to-Florida, Carribean, west coast to ski. Now we cant-flights are too long and expensive, you cant take off and fly to Utah to ski for 4 days-to expensive. You do feel locked up.
I guess I am polar oposites from you. My wife and I are stuck in Southern California and would give anything to be in Hawai'i....I would much rather be stuck in paradise than the deserts of Southern CA (palm springs area) where there are no beaches, no good hiking, too much crime, and no good pizza either. Although, we do have pretty good mexican food
Southern California is more like Hawaii, you may not have such a shock. NY is a completely different world, a different planet. There was nothing we missed-we had beaches, niking, nice friends, jobs.
I bet you have chinese takeout in SOCAl, and it is probably cheap too. not like here.
if you want beach, you can move to California coas, South Carolina, FLorida, all kinds of places, you dont have to come here and pay $7 for crappy non-organic milk.
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