With an Audience in Mind

This polar vortex has taken quite the toll on my finances, from what I understand, it has taken a toll on yours too. The roads this winter have cost estimates of over a million dollars in car repairs including flat tires, there have been numerous cases of expensive and in some cases irreversible damages to homes, not to mention record freezing temperatures that have taken more than enough stray animal and human lives to deem it a tragedy. If you combine the very tangible and frustrating effects of the winter on your finances with the far more intangible effects the lack of sun, stressful driving conditions and general cold weather has on your psyche you have a recipe for regional hatred. Though this polar vortex is not the first time I've come into contact with people hating on the mitten, but the rise in off hand comments and facebook outbursts have driven me to be far mar reflective on the matter. Why do so many people I know consider this state to be a trap? One that so many are willing to escape by all means short of  gnawing their leg off and even some who might be willing to do even that.

My first experience where I truly became cognizant of this phenomenon is when my very first girlfriend moved to New York to go to college. This might seem kind of late in the game to be aware that others might not possess the same sentiments towards their location as me, but having lived such a happy and relatively easy life I didn't find much cause to think of these things. Anyway, she would constantly go off on how she needed to get away from the Midwest, away from Michigan, away from this mundane culture. I would be nothing, but obediently supportive. Many of our mutual friends seemed frustrated because to them it seemed like she was touting that she was better than us simply because she moved to a cooler state (NYC). Even today I know that is not true, that she did feel a calling to exist in a fast paced setting and she in no way was condemning those who did not feel such a calling. Although she usually wrote them off as jealous, which I also do not think is correct because this was different, as I said before these people did not have the calling to move. No, it was her attack on the very culture of Michigan that hurt them. This idea that because our state and where we grew up is so much a part of us, we are also our state, we comprise it and therefore we are all Michigan as Michigan is all of us.

Today, I meet numerous people with this "get out" mentality. I can see how Michigan might feel like a trap. The hand shape that seems to be held up in response to your hopes and dreams, the fortress of massive lakes surrounding it leaving you only one congested exit and once out you find yourself in the Midwest region's flat and elusively short, but actually fairly substantial territory. Most people I know want to flock to the coasts like migratory birds fleeing the harsh cold of a culture-less land. They want beaches, interesting and attractive people, art, life. In my mind I see them wanting adventure or a journey. This of course makes me sound like I'm much older than they and know all of their hopes and aspirations as though I've been right where they were at and gotten through it all. Not true, but I have been on journeys and adventures. This again sounds like I know better them, which seems like I'm rushing to the point, let me back up:

My problem has always been pornography, it's an addiction I've struggled with for some time. I have no qualms in saying this because it is the secret of it all that makes it so difficult to rid myself of it. Anyway, I've made great strides in grappling with this addiction over the past few years. I've had a very tumultuous as well as triumphant journey and have found a deeper sense of self awareness and love than I could have thought possible. When I first began my journey I was spending most of my day wasting away in font of a computer screen and though I still struggle at times, through the action of myself and my friends I have it under control. This is the true problem, my inability to talk about it prevented me from even acknowledging it, and the true problem is not acknowledging the true problem.

Connecting the dots: if you feel a calling to move to another state with culture and fun and better weather, you feel that your problem is that you sit wasting away in a state that you feel truly displaced in. Then move. But first acknowledge your problem: talk about it with a friend or write it down. Acknowledge that maybe a change of setting is only going to give you the temporary alleviation of pain the way a vacation does, that maybe your location has nothing to do with your unhappiness at all, but your inability to recognize deep down why you are unhappy and that the tools you have to fix it do not vary from state to state, but come from within and can be accessed regardless of where you are. Again, I'm not trying to make a claim like I know better because I certainly don't. All I know, yes know because I have been there, is that acknowledging and truly seeing what is holding you back in life is the only way to take the necessary steps to getting over it.

This is ordinarily the point in which I would be done. But while I wrote this I can't help, but think of a conversation I had with a friend of mine who asked me if I had a particular audience in mind when I wrote these types of things. I do, I have in mind that I'm writing to a lot of people who are a lot like me circumstantially and so I assume they take similar things away from what I have to say. But just in case, I think a disclaimer is necessary here, if nowhere else. Disclaimer: I am a suburban, white, male individual with a slight, but very basic grasp on my own reality. I am in no way responsible if you find yourself in very different living circumstances than me and your application of what might appear to be advice does not drastically change the circumstances in which you live. Similarly if you are an individual who finds himself in the same circumstantially alike life as me and do not feel the acknowledgment of your problems has made any lasting difference in your life and you really think you should have just moved to California when you had the chance, this is also not my fault, [insert generic dad advice regarding trusting and listening to others here]. 

Thanks for Listening,

Kyle