Back in San Diego *edit*

I thought spending time in northern California would bring back something of the old longing I had for nature. It did, to a point.

I can’t believe living there used to be my state of normal. I used to live there and think everything was okay, that nothing needed to change, and the people I was surrounded with would eventually get themselves together and do something with their lives.

Damn, it’s good to be back in San Diego! I don’t miss living in northern California at all. I don’t miss the people at all, and while it was good to see them, I don’t need to go back for at least another year. I love my family, I really do, but…well…

My uncle Raleigh and I had a conversation about it on the drive back to San Francisco to catch the plane. The bottom line is that northern California, while extremely beautiful, is ultimately a depressing place that attracts depressing people. The only successful people in that area either own their own business and work their fingers to the bone, work at the prison, or leave the area as soon as they get the chance. On a large scale, this is very much true and it’s very sad.

The rest of the people who are content are largely farmers. The area is ideal for farming and a lot of families own farms that have been with their families for many, many years. They raise cattle mostly as the area is famous for its dairies., and a few raise sheep.

Almost everyone else lives on welfare, are drug addicts, or moved to the area because they have family or friends locked up in Pelican Bay.

I wish that I could live in a big city and still have the natural beauty. I would like to eventually move to Portland or Seattle. It rains ALL THE TIME, but at least it’s still technically urban.

I am so glad to be back. These are the things I noticed while I was in northern California:

1. I feel hopelessly disconnected without constant internet access. My iPhone, which is serviced by AT&T, didn’t get any service at all where I was staying. I had to drive fifteen miles to Crescent City just to text Andy one night. I hate not having internet and text messaging capabilities because they are the primary way I stay in contact with people.

2. I had to actually work to slow myself down. Life in general runs at a slower pace in northern California. It’s much more rural and it felt like no one was ever in a hurry to get anywhere. It felt really weird.

3. I missed my cat very much.

4. I missed decent radio stations. Because the area is so far away from any really large areas of populations, there are two radio stations that really get good reception up there. One is a country station that played mostly songs that had been released back when I was ten years old. The other is a variety of the most popular music and his hot or miss depending on where you are in the county. There are not rock stations, no alternative stations, no classical stations, and a ton of stations in Spanish.

5. I felt less than clean all the time. The water isn’t gross. It’s actually fine, but it’s also not processed like water in bigger cities. Most people would say, "Well isn’t that a good thing?" and I supposed that yes, it is, but when you get used to one thing you tend to not like similar things that aren’t quite the same. The water there just goes through a basic filtration process so when I drink it I can still taste the earth in it, and when I shower it just leaves a different feeling on my skin. I don’t like it.

6. Apparently, I’ve been gone so long now that my friends who live there don’t really care when I come back or not. Which I guess is okay, but I tried for three days to get a hold of them and they wouldn’t return my calls, my texts, or by Facebook messages when I was able to contact them that way. *Shrug* whatever. I wasn’t that mad. I went for drives in the State Park instead and was able to get up to spend some time in Brookings, Oregon because they didn’t get back to me.

7. I just generally detest small town life.  I can no longer relate to it I guess. I love the city and I love the feeling of being close to everything. I love having so much available all the time. I don’t know how they live so separated from everything.

I guess I didn’t realize it when I was living there either, but it’s amazing how much differently I see it now that I live far away from it.

It was however, all in all, a good visit. I got to see a lot of my family, got to see the niece and nephews. My grandmother is still kicking harder than I would have thought possible for a 98 year old woman. She still walks about a mile and a half a day, still gets up at the crack of dawn, and still maintains almost all of her faculties. Except her hearing. She’s deaf as hell, but has very few other issues aside from just being generally old.

My parents and siblings all seem to be getting on okay. There is a bad situation going on with my families 600 scare property that will end up being a lot of trouble, but I’m more or less no longer a part of that.

It was good. I’m glad I went. I don’t need to go again for a while now.

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*IN OTHER NEWS!*

My family went to see the new Star Trek movie while I was up there. I declined going with the excuse that I was trying to get a hold of my friends, which I was, but the real reason I didn’t want to go is because the only theater they have up there is the shittiest theater on the face of the planet AND all my family up there have this terrible, terrible need to commentate on everything when they go to a movie. They are the worst people to go to a movie with ever. I wasn’t about to ruin an experience I wanted to be epic by enduring the torture of going to see the movie with them.

Other movies I need to see before they are out of theaters:

Iron Man 3
42 (Andy told me about this one. He loves baseball so I’m hoping he’ll be up for watching it sometime tomorrow or Friday).
Oblivion (I’m not too excited about this one any more. I heard from a couple people it was anti-climactic).
The Great Gatsby (I might skip this one in favor of the book. I’m hearing a lot of mixed reviews).
The Croods (This is the first animation I’ve been excited about in a long time).

There’s also that one with Will Smith and his son about them crash landing on planet earth that I want to see. It  hasn’t been released yet though. There’s also another animated film, called Epic, that might be good. It’s about fairies it looks like and was very pretty in the preview.

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I didn’t see many of my friends last night. Andy had to go to bed early because he was up at 5am this morning. It was so good to see him.