“When you get into a railway car you want a continent, the man in his carriage requires a township; but a walker like Thoreau finds as much and more along the shores of Walden Pond.” - John Burroughs, The Galaxy, June 1873

I cannot help but thinking of the aging locals, young and old, littering the bars here in Tennessee and back home in Shepherdstown. It’s the locals in Shepherdstown particularly. I agree with you, dangerboy, that the solution lies in avoiding their ways, avoiding their “should have / could have” mentality.

Other things you have mentioned that I would like very much to avoid: “living vicariously through slash and fanfic”, “suburbia”, and in general “a world of ‘kind of like

you’ve completed one level of the game. now the stakes are higher.

Will I miss having long conversations with other educated people?

this all depends where you go.

returning to or staying within a college town will provide the motions of “educated conversation”, but will be littered with the wreckage of would have / could have / should have… just think of the aging locals in the bars of Sheep-town. “i could have been a successful… i would have been a rockstar… i should have moved to the big city…”

in suburbia, there may be an illusion of some sort of comfort and “growing up”, but this is a wasteland of empty souls and crushed dreams. bored housewives living vicariously through slash and fanfic, bored husbands resenting their families and ticking away towards the midlife crisis where the try to replace their lost hair and libido with a red sports car. bored and disgruntled children either angry or without a clue.

and then there’s the mid-sized cities. rent isn’t bad. jobs are ok. everyone is somewhat cozy in their little scenes. but, it’s a world of “kind of like…” and “almost as good as…”. it’s the world of the could-have-runs and almost-beens. it’s the big fish in the small pond who were scared of holding up against the bigger challenge. “yeah, i tried the big city, but it just wasn’t for me.”

and then there’s the SF/LA/Seattle/Portland/Boston/Austin set. rent is higher. life can be a bit of a struggle. but the payoff is higher. people are accomplished. there are people whose work you may have read or seen. and you’ll be close to the potential. there’s the inspiration and the accessibility. but there’s still that glass ceiling. but… when people actually do start to get somewhere or get that itch, they almost always talk of NYC to make that Next Big Step.

New York City. winters are cold and shitty. summers are hot and thick and stink of garbage and piss. rent is absurd. the worst apartment in the town where you went to school would be a mansion here. and you’ve heard about the rent, right? and everyone struggles. but this is it. decent talent with some motivation gets your foot in the door. a little effort and your name is in print, places people back home would recognize. it’s no longer “like”, it is. everybody is doing something or has accomplished something. and those conversations you mentioned before: it’s no longer academic theory, it’s about what actually works, because the potential to make it happen is all right here.

yes, i bounced through other places. and when i hit the city with my portfolio and computer in the back of my car, it was only supposed to be for six months. now, i can’t imagine anywhere else.

right now you have the freedom to choose. you just have to ask yourself how far you want to go and how long do you want to take to get there.