Well, Florida is still Florida. The air is so humid walking around feels like swimming, the cars are still too big to fit in the massive parking spaces, and there’s still lingering damage from the last hurricane as it heads into the next hurricane season.
I’ve been putting some effort – not, like, a lot of effort – into trying to complain less, but with Florida, that takes the form of “This is not a good place for me,” instead of “This is a perfectly fine place.”
When we moved to Los Angeles from Virginia, Cassie didn’t love it, but I did. It was immediate. I hadn’t loved it quite so much when I’d visited it on vacation, but as soon as it was a home and I was making a life for myself instead of trying to see all the tourist stuff, it was great. But the weird thing was when we went back to Virginia, and it just… wasn’t home. A lot had changed, yeah, but even the stuff that was the same wasn’t the same.
On the other hand, when we first moved to Florida, I hated it, and I kept trying to talk myself into liking it. I would remind myself that the grass is always greener on the other side, and try to convince myself to enjoy it. And then when I went back to Los Angeles for the first time… oh dang, it was still perfect. It was everything I remembered it was! If anything, I’d forgotten some of how great it was! The grass was even greener than I remembered it, and Florida did actually suck!
Surprisingly, that made living in Florida way easier and better. Before, I’d been trying to force myself to like it as much as I’d liked LA, basically lying to myself. Once I knew it was as bad as it seemed, though, I was able to stop lying to myself and start finding things that I could enjoy. I couldn’t make it as good as Los Angeles, but once I stopped trying to do things I couldn’t do, I could start doing other things, effective things.
And there is a lot here to like. Since coming back, Cassie and I visited our church and our church friends, Tai Chi and our Tai Chi friends, went to the beach… we’ve had a fine time. I wouldn’t want to live here again, but there are at least a lot of people here that I like.