I came back from the holidays to find that my health care provider Blue Shield has decided to ramp up the prices in my state 50%. It's not that I don't know that they are greedy bastards, it's just that they just increased it 50% with my Patron's insurance plan 50% last month. Since I do not want a new Patron I have decided to look for a new location.
I would also like to blame, erm, I mean give credit to longtime pal MadMollyMillions who has been egging me on for almost a decade now to relocate to Great Britain and even sends me nice links of job sites.
I figure this is going to take some time so I have allotted the entire decade to this search and yes I am committed. I will even be making World Re-location T-shirts which you can buy at our Subversify Web-store. Or if you are lucky enough to host my search for the most perfect place on earth to write with a Patron in tow and a gang of Brownies who will most likely be grumpy about re-locating, then you will get free t-shirt swag!
So this is my plan, I am going to start by visiting all the spots where my cohorts and writing partners already live. Don't worry I won't be writing anything bad about you unless you are veryvery bad host/hostess' in which case expect the worst.
No, really I just want to get a picture of the wide places people live and work and why they hang on there. People don't have to know I'm there if they don't want to. (just leave some warm cuppa by the couch and the bathroom light on so I can find my way)
I kid.
This sprung from my flippant remark that #in2011Iplanto show up in Alaska and Gloucester. And really I found that I want to. I have lived in California all my life and while I have travelled the western U.S. pretty extensively I have never been anywhere further east than Denver, I've never been to the American South, I've never been to the birthplace of my country-And yes Rich that does mean I am coming there, prepare.
Also I don't fly, I'm a big scaredy cat about it and really that needs to be fixed so that's another bit in this decision.
I will be writing about it, the places I go, the people I meet, the religions that try to get me to join up. And I do want to know if I want to relocate because to be honest I love California, but what do I know? Also our economy is in the shitter and the only thing really keeping me here is the employment gig, but there may be something out there...
Okay that sounded really "That Girl"-ish so there is definitely something out there but I don't know what's for me and us. I'm shy by nature. I am the one sitting in the crowd taking it in who you avoid because you think I look familiar and I know something about you or I am figuring something out about you. Which I am, it's my hobby which got worse in college when I discovered investigative psychology, but it helps me write.
It does not always help me interact with people, so I want to see how that changes as I move far out of places I have known.
I have a tentative list beginning as stated before with Alaska and Gloucester but also including:
Philadelphia, PA
Waterbury, Conn
Alberta, CANADA
B.C, CANADA-Okay I've already been there but I have to visit my second cousin anyway
Victoria,CANADA
Florida-undecided
New Orleans, LA
Puerto Rico
New Braunfels, TX
Santa Fe, NM
Phoenix, AZ
Portland, OR
The Sound Area of Washington State
Okay that's a start I'm sure places will be added, most places we have had contributors at Subversify from. There are other places I want to go but it will require more planning like Australia where one of my very favorite one-time contributor is from and New Zealand, and also India which I would love to visit and which may be do-able as we do have friends who have a family home there. But that may not make it in the decade-goal because...
This is going to be like a mix between a pub-crawl and a couch crash which as I'm writing this I realize go hand in hand anyway. It is going to be the anti-thesis of glamorous as it is the penny-tour. The sex drug and rock and roll bits of the trip will have to be cut out except for the rock and roll part. The sex and drugs are just out of my budget.
If anyone has great ideas of not-to-be missed cities/towns/areas/mountain tops for relocation let me know and I will try to add them in. Here are my requirements:
-There must be Internet/satellite connection in at least one pub or coffee shop in town.
-There must be someplace other than Walmart to shop
-People cannot be waiting there with effigies of me to burn...Okay, I'll drive by and get pictures of these places because an effigy of me is pretty classy, but really I can't re-locate there.
- Oh and jobs for Social Workers because yeah, we gotta pay the bills still.
Okay those are my preliminary plans, I am kicking this bitch off this year because really it's time to deliver on promises to visit and check places out anyway.
