ret4rd (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} ret4rd) wrote in pseudohistorian, |
I'll try to answer in order. First, somewhere post-Serenity but way pre-Star Trek.
Leaving a city is a terrible way to measure success! I would have moved to California years before I did, had I realized the following important fact:
You do not need to wait for an invitation. You can just go.
Well, that's obvious, right? Intellectually, I always knew that. But somehow, subconsciously, going someplace to look for work was just "not done" by folks like me. It was a while after I moved before I realized I even had this irrational internal barrier.
I have also observed the spectrum you describe - it's not limited to folks from the prairies. I find the notion of hiding your past kind of bizarre, but then I also feel that way about noisy pride. Being from Winnipeg (or wherever) is not something I did, just an accident of birth. So, I definitely don't hide it, but I don't feel compelled to broadcast it either.
Which is similar to how I feel about the notion of "giving something back". I have no more intrinsic motivation to give something to Winnipeg than to, say, Edmonton. Or Timbuktu. It's a totally separate issue that the city doesn't seem particularly able to identify what it wants or needs.
In a related topic, do you ever find the UM alumni stuff at all compelling?
All of this makes it sound like I'm just a low-affect depressive, but that doesn't reconcile with how I feel about...pretty much everything else in the world. Somehow I just broke this particular bungee, and it did not take long at all. Within a few months abroad, I knew that I had no motivation or compulsion to return "home".
Woops, almost missed a question. My guess is that people from the prairies have the same mobility as anybody else. The reason they seem rare in the world is simple math: it's a huge world and there are only a few million of us to draw from. It is, in a way, an antidote to the need for external validation: there is no rational reason to expect any kind of recognition or visibility, the cringe-worthy youtube quote reel be damned.
Leaving a city is a terrible way to measure success! I would have moved to California years before I did, had I realized the following important fact:
You do not need to wait for an invitation. You can just go.
Well, that's obvious, right? Intellectually, I always knew that. But somehow, subconsciously, going someplace to look for work was just "not done" by folks like me. It was a while after I moved before I realized I even had this irrational internal barrier.
I have also observed the spectrum you describe - it's not limited to folks from the prairies. I find the notion of hiding your past kind of bizarre, but then I also feel that way about noisy pride. Being from Winnipeg (or wherever) is not something I did, just an accident of birth. So, I definitely don't hide it, but I don't feel compelled to broadcast it either.
Which is similar to how I feel about the notion of "giving something back". I have no more intrinsic motivation to give something to Winnipeg than to, say, Edmonton. Or Timbuktu. It's a totally separate issue that the city doesn't seem particularly able to identify what it wants or needs.
In a related topic, do you ever find the UM alumni stuff at all compelling?
All of this makes it sound like I'm just a low-affect depressive, but that doesn't reconcile with how I feel about...pretty much everything else in the world. Somehow I just broke this particular bungee, and it did not take long at all. Within a few months abroad, I knew that I had no motivation or compulsion to return "home".
Woops, almost missed a question. My guess is that people from the prairies have the same mobility as anybody else. The reason they seem rare in the world is simple math: it's a huge world and there are only a few million of us to draw from. It is, in a way, an antidote to the need for external validation: there is no rational reason to expect any kind of recognition or visibility, the cringe-worthy youtube quote reel be damned.
