{"id":451,"date":"2009-11-30T12:00:18","date_gmt":"2009-11-30T19:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jessamyn.com\/journal\/?p=451"},"modified":"2009-11-30T12:13:10","modified_gmt":"2009-11-30T19:13:10","slug":"why-i-dont-live-in-paradise-for-some-definitions-of-paradise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jessamyn.com\/journal\/2009\/11\/why-i-dont-live-in-paradise-for-some-definitions-of-paradise","title":{"rendered":"why I don’t live in paradise, for some definitions of paradise"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been a good long while since I’ve used this blogospace to talk about other blogs. I still read a lot of other people’s news in the form of twitter, facebook and yes, blogs. Rafe Colburn pointed me<\/a> to something I never would have seen otherwise, a post on a NY Times sports blog where Notre Dame Athletic Director Jack Swarbrick talks about why he moved back to Indiana<\/a>. Since I’m one of those lucky people who could probably live anywhere in the world, people sometimes ask me what I’m doing here. This guy’s answer resonated with me. <\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m really all Bay Area at this point. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m loving it out there. In the course of this dinner, Tom tells me that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s moving back to Detroit. I said, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s crazy, why are you doing that?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 He said: \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcIf you can live anywhere in the world, you ought to live here, because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fantastic. It has all this natural beauty, and the weather is great. As a consequence, so many people who live here don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have a reason to be somewhere else. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re attracted by those thing as opposed to something else.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 He said, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcI need to be someplace where there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a sense of community because that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what motivates me.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 That was an absolutely light-bulb moment for me. I said: \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s me. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what motivates me.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 On a dime, I switched and said, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcWhere can I get involved in the community?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s not so much that I think Randolph, Vermont is the only place for me, or that my family has been here for generations or whatever. It’s that I really like living in a small town, where I have a special job to do and where people still need to learn the sorts of things that I teach. And I like living in the woods and despite my grousing about the mice, I like living close, really close, to nature. I like having a short list of options even though I’m aware it’s a sort of artificial constriction of the whole list of what’s possible. There’s always the larger bloggy world when I need to go someplace I’ve never been before. Thanks, Rafe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been a good long while since I’ve used this blogospace to talk about other blogs. I still read a lot of other people’s news in the form of twitter, facebook and yes, blogs. Rafe Colburn pointed me to something I never would have seen otherwise, a post on a NY Times sports blog where […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[420,83,421,417,418,419,15],"class_list":["post-451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized","tag-blogs","tag-jessamyn","tag-nytimes","tag-paradise","tag-rafecolburn","tag-rc3","tag-vermont","h-entry","hentry"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jessamyn.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jessamyn.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jessamyn.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jessamyn.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jessamyn.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jessamyn.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jessamyn.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jessamyn.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jessamyn.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}