Fourteen years ago my best friend since second grade, Jen, traded one BFF for another. I moved from CT/NYC to Arizona and Heidi moved from rural Oregon to Stratford, CT. In May Heidi and Jen stopped by on their way to Heidi’s family farm in Ione, OR; Jen had said she was dropping Heidi off and picking me up for the trip back to Connecticut. If you know Jen, you know she wasn’t kidding!
I am headed back east on Sunday for two weeks and Jen promised she is going to make me not want to leave Connecticut. I know she isn’t kidding and I respectfully accept all wooing to get me back to our hometown of Stratford, CT. I have no intention of moving back permanently; I am pretty settled in a city that is sunny most of the year. With the temperature headed to 110 degrees I picked the right weeks to head east!
As it turns out, what I call a small town of 50,000 people is much hipper and more city-like than I had imagined. Check out Heidi’s blog post Socializing in a Small Town. She lives in Ione, OR where the population is more like 500 and the closest town is 15 miles away. I don’t think her neighbors are close considering this picture Jen took from the guest room at Heidi’s home:
View from Ione, OR
Talk about putting things into perspective! Heidi’s town is Way The Hell Out There for me. I have maintained I need to be in a place with excellent WiFi because my business is social media and blogging. That eliminates A LOT of Way The Hell Out There places – even Ione, OR. I think Heidi is on a cell phone Wifi something and I don’t know if she can work from her home – or even her home town. A lady from a farm learns how to make things work!
As a suburban girl living in a sprawling city/town of Phoenix I enjoy the ‘luxuries’ of life. I can go grocery shopping in an hour or so rather than a daytrip to the closest town with big box stores. There are more strip malls than I can count and major malls in all four directions. I can grab coffee at a different place every day and not leave a five mile radius of home. I consider Prescott, AZ to be a small town with a population of around 40,000 people and I would move there in a heartbeat.
The next time you think about your life, consider that of others. It will put things in perspective.
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[...] So this blog post is in response to hers. A little more food for thought for Anne and my other big city friends.Here is a link to Anne’s blog post, to give you some reference:http://mcauleyfreelancewriting.com/perspectives-turns-out-my-small-town-is-heidis-big-city/ [...]