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bookofmirrorsI thought I'd post a bit more about our move to Illinois. It took at least one person by surprise, so I'm apparently mistaken that I'd mentioned it before, so I thought I would explain a bit more. Keep in mind I can only answer these questions for myself, but 
BlckwngdOrcl and I have talked about this extensively, and our purposes are aligned. For any more specific details, you'd have to ask him. Perhaps he'll make a post about his own motives, or mentioned something in the comments to this post. I hope so.
The first thing, I figure, is why move at all?
I moved to Atlanta 7 years ago. I've always joked that I was brought here to find my husband, and to find![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
core_energetics. I have also found a great deal of kinship here amongst people who share my views more than my Midwest friends ever could have (with, to some degree, the exception of Frog). My beliefs have been both nurtured and challenged here. I've made friends of exceptional caliber, and lost one very dear to me. I've had successes and setbacks. While I'm sure that, while I remain here, I'll continue to have such experiences, I truly think I've learned what I came to learn, and experienced what I came to experience. Those things I have yet to learn/experience while I'm here, I feel I'm on the path of, and will assimilate them before I go. But I feel like I'm ready to go.
Secondarily, and much more mundane - it's too fucking expensive here. I had expected Atlanta to cost more than the much smaller town in Illinois that I moved from, but I never expected it to be this expensive. Nor did I ever expect my own financial situation to be less that stable. The combination of the two has been devastating in that respect. While I recognize that my (our) own choices have been to blame for much of this, I feel it's also true that we're swimming upstream, and there's no reason for that.
We also want a more simple existence. More on that later.
I'm also tired of living so far from my family. I hate not being able to see them as much as I'd like, and I know they're not too happy about it, either. Again, more on that, later.
Why Illinois?
Well, not just any place in Illinois. Champaign-Urbana. This was a bit of a hard decision to make. One of the thingsBlckwngdOrcl and I had agreed long ago was that, if we moved from Atlanta, we'd not move anywhere that either of us had lived before, so as not to give either of us some sort of unfair advantage. I did, however, always say I wanted to move to someplace like Chambana. The area has the best of all worlds. When I went to school there, there was a t-shirt being sold at the campus stores. Below crude and colorful sketches of same, it had a quick map of the area, depicted as: corn, cow, campus, corn. (I might be mixing up the order, and maybe it was two cows and one corn, but you get the idea.) Anyway, this was a pretty accurate description of the area. Unlike Atlanta, and other big cities, which has universities and colleges because they're big cities, the only real thing Chambana has going for it is the University. Other than that, it's sitting in the middle of rather boring farmland.
But that's kinda the appeal. There's a sense of small-town to the place. But in the midst of this small town is this thriving bohemia. The town that's sprung up around the campus has many of the same amenities as much larger towns, and, best of all, a great deal of the amenities of some much larger cities, just on a smaller scale. Because the school has a fine arts department, there are fabulous plays there, done by students. It's not Broadway, but it's fine for my purposes. Because of the anthropological and archeology departments, there are at least 3 museums right on campus - small, but at least as interesting as Fernbank, and in some cases, moreso. Because of the arts department, there are a great deal of quirky art shops. Because, after all, it's a college campus, there are independent coffee shops where people can gather, head shops, a fair number of porn shops, an absolutely fabulous used bookstore (more than one, actually, but there's one that's my favorite), a fantastic tea shop, great quirky clubs and bars... the list goes on. The transit system, as I recall it, works better than MARTA, and I think it's a pretty fair assumption that a great deal of the population is connected to the University in some fashion, so I think it's safe to say that the average IQ in that area makes the place smarter than the average bear.
Because of the University, multi-culturalism abounds. Perhaps not to the degree of Atlanta, to be sure, but there are definitely people there from other countries, other races, other belief systems. When I was there, and this may have changed since then, the per capita GLBT population there exceeded that of San Francisco. I already kindasorta know one pagan couple there, who owned a walk-in shop when I lived there. They still live there, but now run an internet business. I'm sure I could look them up. Of course, I'll seek others, and I'm guessing that the students will continue to provide an influx of new pagans to interact with. I'm seriously considering starting a Border Pagans of my/our own up there. Certainly, the Borders down here will vouch for the benefit of having such a group.
Being a small town, and not really anywhere near Chicago, (where it's even more expensive than Atlanta, I'm told), things are MUCH cheaper there. I've had some Apartment Finders and Real Estate Finders for the area sent to me, and you wouldn't believe the prices of the houses and apartments there. Sooooo much cheaper, often with more amenities and space than we have now. I have every confidence that we'll be able to find somewhere that will take all the cats. We thought about buying outright (with the idea that, by the time we move, we'd be able to afford it), but decided against it. More on that later. Not only is the cost of renting/buying less there, the cost of living is much less, too. My past experience with living in Illinois (farther north, to be sure) indicates to me that my income certainly shouldn't decrease any significant amount. At any rate, I plan to be doing the animal communication thing full-time by then, anyway.
When will we move?
2 years from now. I need to finish my Core Energetic classes, and that will take two more years. There's a possibility I could do that from a distance, but the difficulty involved is daunting to say the least. Also, again, I want to be doing the animal communication thing full-time by then, and I'll need time to get that established. My training in Core is going to include an unprecedented course of study, involving animals rather than people. Pam and I are going to develop it as we go along - it'll be groundbreaking work, and I'm excited (and somewhat overwhelmed) to be a part of it. We're still not sure what type of workBlckwngdOrcl will be doing, and where his path will lie. We're making that up as we go along, too, and getting some help from 
BlyssMouse and 
Lupaloo along the way, among others. We're admittedly chalking up a great deal to faith, and it's not going to be without hard work, but I'm OK with both of those things.
What are the downsides?
Well, as I said, we hadn't originally planned on moving somewhere where one of us had been before. However, there were just so many good things about Chambana, and the fact that I knew the place actually gave it more appeal rather than less. We had the chance to visit it on our way home from our last trip to Indiana to visit my parents. I loved it just as much as I remembered, andBlckwngdOrcl absolutely fell in love with it. He often says he'd be happy to move tomorrow.
We're moving closer to my parents, which is great for me. However,BlckwngdOrcl's parents live here, in Marietta, and he'd be leaving them behind. They're older than my parents, and this might mean that he's not around when they die. Now, granted, he's never been as close to them as I've been to my parents, but I still wonder if, once we're away, he'll regret it. We very rarely see or contact them now, when we have the opportunity. We're rarely called when things happen, like sudden changes in his father's health, or the miscarriage or birth of babies - we find out about them on the rare occasions someone calls someone. We're never really in the loop, which leads me to believe the distance is a bit mutual. It's almost impossible to determine who's reaction to whom, but it would seem that it's pretty ingrained now. I'd like to see that change, but that's his battle, not mine. I can only, at this point, trust him when he says that he's OK with moving from them, and trust that we can deal with it if/when that changes.
And (not quite) last, but not at all least, moving away from our friends. We've been mostly isolated the past few years, so in practice, it would seem that very little would change. However, knowing that I could drop everything and go visit you guys is, underneath it all, a great comfort to me. I'm sure it would feel much much different if dropping everything to visit meant a 12-hour drive. That's probably the hardest thing. Plus, there's some part of me that still wishes for some sort of reconciliation with
Logomancer, and I feel that, far away from him, that will never happen. Maybe it will never happen, anyway. Another deep sadness for me.
Snow. This actually isn't a deterrent for either of us. We both miss it. The Beastie will have to learn to drive in it, but that's easy enough. I'll take him out to do what rural Northerners have done for decades - take the car to a very isolated spot (which can include an empty parking lot after hours), and let him skid the car all over the place as he learns to control the spins, feel how the car responds. It's quite fun, actually. The accompanying cold just means an excuse to curl up at home, preferably in front of a fire with some hot chocolate. Truth be told, much as I love being naked, I absolutely adore big soft sweaters.
Trees. Or lack thereof. I learned recently that Atlanta has the highest number of trees per capita than any city in the country. And it shows. Atlanta is a beautiful place. I have loved living here. Illinois is flat, and has been farmed for so long that there are few trees left, much less old ones. My husband assures me we can plant trees, though. And we might even be so lucky as to find one of the rare copses.
What will our living situation be there?
Well, as I said, we'll start with an apartment, or a rental house. What we really want to do is buy some land and build a house. We'd both like to build some sort of natural home - a straw-bale house, a cob house, or the like. We'd like to live off the grid, using windmills and/or solar power, hot-water-on-demand, and incorporating the use of graywater and compost. I've always loved those Worms Eat My Garbage! things. I want a garden, where I can grown my own stuff, organically, of course, using ladybugs and praying mantises as pesticides. Of course, this is vastly different than the life we currently lead, but we're making small steps in this direction. We're both very excited about the prospect. Of course, this means we won't be living inside Chambana proper, but I'm happy to live up to 30 miles out. Again, best of both worlds. The cost of building this type of home is a great deal less than building a conventional home, and much more rewarding in the end. I want a place where my cats (and whatever other animals we get) can truly be indoor-outdoor pets, with the kind of freedom I can't offer them in Atlanta.
Anything else?
Probably. For instance, I think it would be a crime to live so close to the University and not take a few classes here and there. Plus, it might give us some student discounts. If I have to have a "real" job initially, I've worked for the state of Illinois before, as well as had a nursing license there. As far as state jobs go, at least, I get preferential treatment when it comes to hiring.
If we can live the way I envision, which includes both of us working from home, we might consider having children. That's a long shot, for me. But it's a thought.
Of course, we'd have to make sure that we keep our current contact info with the Powers That Be of Georgia, in case Glenn's daughter ever wants to find him. This will make it a longer trip, but there's no question in our minds, and we never want there to be a question in hers, that she's always welcome in our home.
Of course, that goes for our friends here, as well.
I think that's about it. I think I've covered all the bases. There are several steps between here and there that I haven't mentioned, like moving costs, getting out of debt (in whole or in part) before we go, my and my husband's job situations in the meantime, etc.. Those will get dealt with as we go.
Feel free to ask questions, etc..
BlckwngdOrcl and I have talked about this extensively, and our purposes are aligned. For any more specific details, you'd have to ask him. Perhaps he'll make a post about his own motives, or mentioned something in the comments to this post. I hope so.The first thing, I figure, is why move at all?
I moved to Atlanta 7 years ago. I've always joked that I was brought here to find my husband, and to find
core_energetics. I have also found a great deal of kinship here amongst people who share my views more than my Midwest friends ever could have (with, to some degree, the exception of Frog). My beliefs have been both nurtured and challenged here. I've made friends of exceptional caliber, and lost one very dear to me. I've had successes and setbacks. While I'm sure that, while I remain here, I'll continue to have such experiences, I truly think I've learned what I came to learn, and experienced what I came to experience. Those things I have yet to learn/experience while I'm here, I feel I'm on the path of, and will assimilate them before I go. But I feel like I'm ready to go.Secondarily, and much more mundane - it's too fucking expensive here. I had expected Atlanta to cost more than the much smaller town in Illinois that I moved from, but I never expected it to be this expensive. Nor did I ever expect my own financial situation to be less that stable. The combination of the two has been devastating in that respect. While I recognize that my (our) own choices have been to blame for much of this, I feel it's also true that we're swimming upstream, and there's no reason for that.
We also want a more simple existence. More on that later.
I'm also tired of living so far from my family. I hate not being able to see them as much as I'd like, and I know they're not too happy about it, either. Again, more on that, later.
Why Illinois?
Well, not just any place in Illinois. Champaign-Urbana. This was a bit of a hard decision to make. One of the things
BlckwngdOrcl and I had agreed long ago was that, if we moved from Atlanta, we'd not move anywhere that either of us had lived before, so as not to give either of us some sort of unfair advantage. I did, however, always say I wanted to move to someplace like Chambana. The area has the best of all worlds. When I went to school there, there was a t-shirt being sold at the campus stores. Below crude and colorful sketches of same, it had a quick map of the area, depicted as: corn, cow, campus, corn. (I might be mixing up the order, and maybe it was two cows and one corn, but you get the idea.) Anyway, this was a pretty accurate description of the area. Unlike Atlanta, and other big cities, which has universities and colleges because they're big cities, the only real thing Chambana has going for it is the University. Other than that, it's sitting in the middle of rather boring farmland. But that's kinda the appeal. There's a sense of small-town to the place. But in the midst of this small town is this thriving bohemia. The town that's sprung up around the campus has many of the same amenities as much larger towns, and, best of all, a great deal of the amenities of some much larger cities, just on a smaller scale. Because the school has a fine arts department, there are fabulous plays there, done by students. It's not Broadway, but it's fine for my purposes. Because of the anthropological and archeology departments, there are at least 3 museums right on campus - small, but at least as interesting as Fernbank, and in some cases, moreso. Because of the arts department, there are a great deal of quirky art shops. Because, after all, it's a college campus, there are independent coffee shops where people can gather, head shops, a fair number of porn shops, an absolutely fabulous used bookstore (more than one, actually, but there's one that's my favorite), a fantastic tea shop, great quirky clubs and bars... the list goes on. The transit system, as I recall it, works better than MARTA, and I think it's a pretty fair assumption that a great deal of the population is connected to the University in some fashion, so I think it's safe to say that the average IQ in that area makes the place smarter than the average bear.
Because of the University, multi-culturalism abounds. Perhaps not to the degree of Atlanta, to be sure, but there are definitely people there from other countries, other races, other belief systems. When I was there, and this may have changed since then, the per capita GLBT population there exceeded that of San Francisco. I already kindasorta know one pagan couple there, who owned a walk-in shop when I lived there. They still live there, but now run an internet business. I'm sure I could look them up. Of course, I'll seek others, and I'm guessing that the students will continue to provide an influx of new pagans to interact with. I'm seriously considering starting a Border Pagans of my/our own up there. Certainly, the Borders down here will vouch for the benefit of having such a group.
Being a small town, and not really anywhere near Chicago, (where it's even more expensive than Atlanta, I'm told), things are MUCH cheaper there. I've had some Apartment Finders and Real Estate Finders for the area sent to me, and you wouldn't believe the prices of the houses and apartments there. Sooooo much cheaper, often with more amenities and space than we have now. I have every confidence that we'll be able to find somewhere that will take all the cats. We thought about buying outright (with the idea that, by the time we move, we'd be able to afford it), but decided against it. More on that later. Not only is the cost of renting/buying less there, the cost of living is much less, too. My past experience with living in Illinois (farther north, to be sure) indicates to me that my income certainly shouldn't decrease any significant amount. At any rate, I plan to be doing the animal communication thing full-time by then, anyway.
When will we move?
2 years from now. I need to finish my Core Energetic classes, and that will take two more years. There's a possibility I could do that from a distance, but the difficulty involved is daunting to say the least. Also, again, I want to be doing the animal communication thing full-time by then, and I'll need time to get that established. My training in Core is going to include an unprecedented course of study, involving animals rather than people. Pam and I are going to develop it as we go along - it'll be groundbreaking work, and I'm excited (and somewhat overwhelmed) to be a part of it. We're still not sure what type of work
BlckwngdOrcl will be doing, and where his path will lie. We're making that up as we go along, too, and getting some help from BlyssMouse and Lupaloo along the way, among others. We're admittedly chalking up a great deal to faith, and it's not going to be without hard work, but I'm OK with both of those things.What are the downsides?
Well, as I said, we hadn't originally planned on moving somewhere where one of us had been before. However, there were just so many good things about Chambana, and the fact that I knew the place actually gave it more appeal rather than less. We had the chance to visit it on our way home from our last trip to Indiana to visit my parents. I loved it just as much as I remembered, and
BlckwngdOrcl absolutely fell in love with it. He often says he'd be happy to move tomorrow. We're moving closer to my parents, which is great for me. However,
BlckwngdOrcl's parents live here, in Marietta, and he'd be leaving them behind. They're older than my parents, and this might mean that he's not around when they die. Now, granted, he's never been as close to them as I've been to my parents, but I still wonder if, once we're away, he'll regret it. We very rarely see or contact them now, when we have the opportunity. We're rarely called when things happen, like sudden changes in his father's health, or the miscarriage or birth of babies - we find out about them on the rare occasions someone calls someone. We're never really in the loop, which leads me to believe the distance is a bit mutual. It's almost impossible to determine who's reaction to whom, but it would seem that it's pretty ingrained now. I'd like to see that change, but that's his battle, not mine. I can only, at this point, trust him when he says that he's OK with moving from them, and trust that we can deal with it if/when that changes.And (not quite) last, but not at all least, moving away from our friends. We've been mostly isolated the past few years, so in practice, it would seem that very little would change. However, knowing that I could drop everything and go visit you guys is, underneath it all, a great comfort to me. I'm sure it would feel much much different if dropping everything to visit meant a 12-hour drive. That's probably the hardest thing. Plus, there's some part of me that still wishes for some sort of reconciliation with
Logomancer, and I feel that, far away from him, that will never happen. Maybe it will never happen, anyway. Another deep sadness for me.Snow. This actually isn't a deterrent for either of us. We both miss it. The Beastie will have to learn to drive in it, but that's easy enough. I'll take him out to do what rural Northerners have done for decades - take the car to a very isolated spot (which can include an empty parking lot after hours), and let him skid the car all over the place as he learns to control the spins, feel how the car responds. It's quite fun, actually. The accompanying cold just means an excuse to curl up at home, preferably in front of a fire with some hot chocolate. Truth be told, much as I love being naked, I absolutely adore big soft sweaters.
Trees. Or lack thereof. I learned recently that Atlanta has the highest number of trees per capita than any city in the country. And it shows. Atlanta is a beautiful place. I have loved living here. Illinois is flat, and has been farmed for so long that there are few trees left, much less old ones. My husband assures me we can plant trees, though. And we might even be so lucky as to find one of the rare copses.
What will our living situation be there?
Well, as I said, we'll start with an apartment, or a rental house. What we really want to do is buy some land and build a house. We'd both like to build some sort of natural home - a straw-bale house, a cob house, or the like. We'd like to live off the grid, using windmills and/or solar power, hot-water-on-demand, and incorporating the use of graywater and compost. I've always loved those Worms Eat My Garbage! things. I want a garden, where I can grown my own stuff, organically, of course, using ladybugs and praying mantises as pesticides. Of course, this is vastly different than the life we currently lead, but we're making small steps in this direction. We're both very excited about the prospect. Of course, this means we won't be living inside Chambana proper, but I'm happy to live up to 30 miles out. Again, best of both worlds. The cost of building this type of home is a great deal less than building a conventional home, and much more rewarding in the end. I want a place where my cats (and whatever other animals we get) can truly be indoor-outdoor pets, with the kind of freedom I can't offer them in Atlanta.
Anything else?
Probably. For instance, I think it would be a crime to live so close to the University and not take a few classes here and there. Plus, it might give us some student discounts. If I have to have a "real" job initially, I've worked for the state of Illinois before, as well as had a nursing license there. As far as state jobs go, at least, I get preferential treatment when it comes to hiring.
If we can live the way I envision, which includes both of us working from home, we might consider having children. That's a long shot, for me. But it's a thought.
Of course, we'd have to make sure that we keep our current contact info with the Powers That Be of Georgia, in case Glenn's daughter ever wants to find him. This will make it a longer trip, but there's no question in our minds, and we never want there to be a question in hers, that she's always welcome in our home.
Of course, that goes for our friends here, as well.
I think that's about it. I think I've covered all the bases. There are several steps between here and there that I haven't mentioned, like moving costs, getting out of debt (in whole or in part) before we go, my and my husband's job situations in the meantime, etc.. Those will get dealt with as we go.
Feel free to ask questions, etc..
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no subject
Date: 2007-07-26 10:38 pm (UTC)Go for it girl...we are starting to look towards moving to Toronto and getting out of America at last. We've both had it with the social and political crappiness here and I'm so excited about the possibility of starting all over again in a new place (with free healthcare and no taxes on Dirk's poker winnings!)
I just got my passport application sent in :)
But if we move there, you won't be horribly far away from us I think?
And I agree, Atlanta is stupid-expensive, which is why we left 5 years ago ;)
no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 07:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 07:57 am (UTC)