I took a trip to Colorado this summer and it was the first time in my life I ever really left the south. It just blew my fucking mind. I love where I’m from, but there’s just so much fucked up shit that I just thought was how it was. I’m a white cishet, so I’m not vulnerable to the worst of the south, but it absolutely blew my mind seeing somewhere that you didn’t just have a background level of distressing shit in view at all times. The most striking thing was how there weren’t any ruins around. You get used to seeing overgrown, dilapidated buildings dotting the side of the road pretty much everywhere you go. It was wild to me how rare that was, comparatively, once you get to the other side of Texas. There’s a million other things, but honestly I didn’t spend enough time there to really know if all of them are the norm or if I’m just making shit up. As shitty as I feel saying it, it would also be nice to try dating somewhere there weren’t quite so many ““country”” girls.
My only regret would be leaving behind all my friends and family. That’s just such an insane leap to me, and I have no faith that I’d be able to find new friends elsewhere now that I’m out of college. I know I’m experiencing a massively cliche impulse and all that, and that there’s lots of problems that will follow you wherever you move, but how do I know if I’m insane or not? Does anybody have advice for trying to find a job somewhere you don’t live? I’m sick of all these damn pine trees.
My advice to you is to get the fuck out of the South. I’ve been gone a long time. Take the plunge.
I think the thing I miss least is the superficial politeness. The first time I saw someone tell someone someone spouting racist shit to fuck off actually blew my mind. I thought you just had to listen uncomfortably and then talk shit about them once they were gone.
Polite does not mean nice. It does not mean good. And it can paper over a lot of ugly stuff.
As shitty as I feel saying it, it would also be nice to try dating somewhere there weren’t quite so many ““country”” girls.
As a non American, in very curious to know what this means.
The stereotype he’s referring to is someone who is enthusiastically unsophisticated, politically conservative, and staunchly religious, who has the radio tuned to a guy serenading his Ford F-350 Super Duty.
And if you want to lose to a woman in a toxic masculinity contest, she’s your best bet. This lady will have you pulling the straw and lid off your soda cup in the car and drinking from the rim. If you know how do the wrong household chore she might call up her sister, mom, half sister, aunt and best friend, sobbing-
Don’t get me wrong you can be country and a radical communist, but that image is what he’s talking about.
Consciously country girls fall into one of two categories: Abby Shapiro and “One of the boys.” The Abby Shapiro types are similar to “trads” in that they’re generally religious conservatives who spend lots of time on domestic tasks and are very comfortable in the 1950s female gender role. The second type fit into the country guy stereotypes, but the difference is that they have a bright pink Jeep instead of a pickup truck. Both expect a very classically masculine southern man: you have to hunt, go mudding in a pickup truck, be conservative, stoic/angry all the time, and a laundry list of stuff that I’m not interested in. They’re not all bad people or anything, but they’re 100% people that I do not feel comfortable around.
i moved here from the deep south. it’s hard to deny it’s better here overall, i don’t feel like half the people i encounter want to kill me on the spot for being visibly trans. but it would also be lying to say this is not a place ravaged by libertarian politics. every imaginable horror of a hands-off government approach is on full display. meanwhile i feel like the south is very much You Get What You See. despite all the lilting from outsiders that southerners are two-faced, i never felt that’s true. i guess it depends on what’s important to you. i felt connected to the land in the south… i could never feel that way here.
that said, check out the colorado climate corps. awesome fulfilling work and the pay is… ok. there are for sure places even in denver you could make it work. and i suspect it’ll set you up well for future, better-paying work and introduce you to people you might vibe with.
but it would also be lying to say this is not a place ravaged by libertarian politics
TABOR was supposed to be a national/multi-state program to kill ‘big government’ and it’s worked so fucking poorly in the only state it was implemented in that nobody else has taken the dive, lmao. Texas and Kansas like their nice roads too much for the rugged FREEDOM of the Colorado way (completely emaciated, rotting infrastructure)
Texas and Kansas like their nice roads too much
Every road in Texas is literally ass. Potholes everywhere and no one fixes them at all for years at a time.
Colorado is totally worth moving to. I’m an hour away from anything I could want to do outdoors. Within a two hour drive I have some of the most beautiful places in the country all to myself. In eight years of constant adventures I’ve barely left the northeast corner of the state and it made me a whole new level of naturalist.
At least with Texas you’re within weekend trip distance. It’s a 12 hour drive to Dallas from Denver and there’s bus service in the Front Range cities.
15 minutes away, with lots of little beach coves to kayak camp at. An hour away there’s a huge set of sand dunes where Pacific storms deposit shark teeth against the Rockies. Four-ish hours away is the absolutely surreal Great Sand Dunes National Park: https://images.app.goo.gl/hcxfRwEjYGpv3HxU8
