I like Baltimore, it's a fun town. There's a thriving music and arts community, it's relatively affordable and the streets are all laid out in a sensible grid formation. I've lived here for about 15 years now so I've become a little jaded. OK- I was born jaded, I've become downright surly.
I spent the last year living in Wellborn, Florida. I don't like Wellborn. It's not a fun town, it has no music or arts community, half the roads aren't even paved let alone laid out in a sensible grid. It was an eye opening experience to live in an ultraconservative southern town during a recession. Like one of those scenes from A clockwork Orange where they pry your eyes open and force you to read things like a giant church sign that says, "Get her done for Jesus!". Actually, that was one of the more amusing things I saw down there. Less amusing was the poverty, the lack of education, the meth epidemic, and the frightningly depressed economy. The young people that are going nowhere fast and their parents that have already been.
A good thing came out of my Year of Living Dingily. I have a new appreciation for all the advantages with which I grew up. My parents (total buzzkills) insisted on a good education for their children, it was a given that we would all have the opportunity to attend college. I went to private schools surrounded by the priviledged, most more priviledged than myslf. I never had to worry about whether there would be enough food in the house, whether the electricity would get cut off, whether we would have heat. Those thoughts never entered my head, so I was free to fill my head with other things, not all of them erudite. I am thankful for the good life that I have now, and for all the great friends and family that I have so often taken for granted.
Yes, I know this post is totally gay.
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