People that have moved do you really feel at home

[indiajust]

Smaller towns make it all easier. I like the slower pace. Much easier to arrange social stuff, since entire towns have fun all at once. Less of the busy noisy and more of the quiet thoughtful. The signal/noise ratio works in my favor and feels like home faster

 

[MrsHaloFIRE]

Weve moved 7 times cross country, half back, etc. At about the 3 month mark I can rest, and at about a year or so it feels homey in the new city. I remind myself that I do about the same things whereever I live. Groceries, laundry, work/leisure activities etc. Its just a diff setting. A gym is a gym is a gym. Theres Jesus all over. You can get a burger. Theres a movie theatre or a hundred.

 

[meleana]

Got married at age 21, bought a handyman special, and moved to a different county right near my favorite aunt and cousin, though still worked in the county where I grew up and near my parents.

After 10 years sold that home and moved to a new home anbout 40 minutes further north and was there for 32 years. Knew no one.

But honestly between commuting, working and everyday home responsibilities never really was engrained in our community there. And family and friends were scattered all over and not close by.

So came time for retirement we moved out of state not far from our only child. Again, knowing no one.

We were ecstatic to move. At first, it just felt like we were on vacation everyday. But now 5 years in our little cottage we feel pretty much at home and the end of the day we are really homebodies and we can make a home anywhere I think.

We made friends immediately here in our HOA community and even outside of it. Just a different vibe altogether.

Ironically we’ve come full circle as our first house- that handyman special- was a one level small cottage just up from a lake. And what we live in now is the same, except we bought it brand new.

Sometimes I miss our big salt box colonial on 101/2 wooded acres with lots of windows and wildlife and privacy. But would I want to go back? No.

And we never have gone back to our former state (5 1/2 hours away) since we moved 5 years ago.

Something I noticed- the people who live here who are from an adjoining state never seem to separate from it. That’s because they can easily drive back and forth in two- three hours or less and visit family and friends. So still keep their doctors there as well. They even shop there sometimes, go to cultural events there and so forth. In other words they never have cut the strings.

With us, that’s not an option so we had to assimilate. And we wanted to. We left the other part of our lives behind to start a new one.

 

[2retireearly]

All of these replies, seem to start with 'we'. If I had a 'we' then moving could be fun, as no matter where I was, 'we' would be in it together. But I have no spouse or partner, so cutting all my happy ties and stuff here, and going totally alone to a new place, would seem daunting to me. I still feel like I have so many new adventures and have met more people since not working, than I ever knew before, right here, in the place that feels like home to me. so, I'm not moving.

 

[Stormy Kromer]

Back to the OP's question.

I am a 4th generation immigrant of Minnesotan Homesteaders in the southwestern part of the state. Great grandparents left Norway in the 1850's looking for something better. Broke the sod with oxen not far from Little House on the Prairie. We kept farming til I had to look for work elsewhere.

A few years ago I moved to a different part of the state for work before I FIRED. NE Minnesota on the Iron Range. Many of the people there were Extremely territorial and didn't take kindly to anyone whose great grandparents weren't burried in the local cemetery. If your grandparents weren't born there "You weren't from there" They'd they reminded you all the time.

That seemed strange to me since their great grand parents were immigrants themselves about 100 years ago and didn't speak English for two generations.. now they're the insiders keeping outsiders at arms length and hate (extremely dislike) anyone that doesn't have their local heritage and speak English. Even if they are from a county away.

These people immigrated from countries away to work in the mines and brought their country's heritage with them. GREAT! The mine owners would mix them up on purpose so they couldn't speak the same language and organize a union.

The mines shut down hard about 40 years ago and a lot of these folks are still waiting around waiting for the mines to open up again. I can't blame them, its home. But their grandparents moved across an ocean and half a continent to find work. You may have to move to find work too, I did.

I liked the people where I moved in to in NE MN on the Iron Range . I was the son of immigrants too but realized you can't wait for work to come to you just because it used to be there.

The sad thing is that these folks waiting for the mines to open up again will find out that mine owners will bring in immigrants to fill the jobs and not hire the locals. That's how it has always worked.

I was a 4th generation Minnesotan and never felt at home in another part of the state while I lived there.

 

[boatfishandnature]

I have lived in 11 (very) different cities/towns in 5 countries, so, don’t have very deep roots, as others who followed a similar pattern have mentioned. 6 years ago, we moved to our chosen retirement location (the Algarve, in Portugal). We do keep in touch with some of our friends, via video calls, email, and WhatsApp. We have adapted well to the new location, but what we both missed the most was that, in our previous last four locations, we were both at the top of our professions and well known. The combination of retirement and a new country where we were/are unknown, was harder than we thought… but this is a really great location and we are still glad that we moved.

 

[ychuck46]

We moved 15 years ago from our original home state, exchanging the cold North for the mild South. Lived there most of our lives, growing up there and still lived in that state in another area for work. Love our new adopted home, feel very much at home here, and have had zero desire to go back to our former state for any reason (and we haven't in the 15 years, even though we have lots of friends and my wife's relatives who still live there). People from there are more than welcome to visit and stay with us since we have plenty of space, but we choose not to go back to that area ever again. Our only child also got out with her husband a few years after we did and live in the neighboring state to the east of us, and for that we are thankful as well.

 

[street]

Yesterday I talked with a young lady when I was getting some outdoor licenses from a small-town store. She and her husband moved here from the south to this quite small town and love it.

The winters have been an eye opener, but she says she loves them now. She just loves the kindness, quietness, the slow pace of life and would no way ever move back to the rat race of the overpopulated area she lived all her live.

She said this is home and will die here never to go back to the high-speed life and rudeness of people there ever again.

The visit we had showed me again how lucky I am to be born and live in a place I treasure. Rural area not for all people isn't for everyone, and I get that.

I do think moves can be great and feel like people have lived there forever if you have an open mind and find the treasures of the area and learn to apply them. There really isn't any perfect place all have pros and cons; it comes down your interests I would say.

 

[meleana]

Being an introvert, home for me is a space that I can call my own and where I can control who does and does not enter that space. I have moved many times, the largest being from northern Europe to California. I don't really think of the place I was born and spent the first 18 years of my life as home. I was happy to leave there at 18 and I never want to live there again.

I'm the same. I couldn't wait to get the hell out of my childhood home and area and start a new life at age 21 in the next county up!

 

[Cujet]

The real estate agent asked me just before the attempted purchase of a home: "Does this feel like home?"

The answer was yes for the home we chose but sadly did not purchase due to inability to come to terms. Looking back, that was the one I wanted and I will forever kick myself for not purchasing. It was "home" in every way. A place that felt right.

I guess my point is that the house and location matter a lot too.

 

[Gumby]

This thread reminds me of an old Alan Parsons Project song:

Where do we go from here, now that all of the children have grown up?
And how do we spend our time knowing nobody gives us a damn?
I don't wanna live here no more, I don't wanna stay.
Ain't gonna spend the rest of my life quietly fading away.

"Games People Play" (1980)

 

[Stormy Kromer]

This thread reminds me of an old Alan Parsons Project song:

Where do we go from here, now that all of the children have grown up?
And how do we spend our time knowing nobody gives us a damn?
I don't wanna live here no more, I don't wanna stay
Ain't gonna spend the rest of my life quietly fading away

"Games People Play" (1980)

I've heard that song as many times as you have and I never put it together.

 

[Cujet]

This thread reminds me of an old Alan Parsons Project song:

Where do we go from here, now that all of the children have grown up?
And how do we spend our time knowing nobody gives us a damn?
I don't wanna live here no more, I don't wanna stay
Ain't gonna spend the rest of my life quietly fading away

"Games People Play" (1980)

The Alan Parsons Project is among my very fav's. The lyrics there are amazingly fitting.

 

[Music Lover]

The Alan Parsons Project is among my very fav's. The lyrics there are amazingly fitting.

One of my bands played "I Wouldn't Want to Be Like You" for a deck party and I assumed that it would be a one-off as most people couldn't have cared less about it. We liked it so play it once and forget about it.

But it ended up getting more positive comments than any other song we played that night and now it's in our regular rotation unless we're playing to a "dance" crowd.

 

[Katsmeow]

This is such an interesting question. We moved from Texas to Delaware a year and a half ago. Does it feel like home? I think mostly but not entirely. I had lived in Texas my entire life. I grew up in the DFW area but lived most of my adult life in Houston. Then moved back to the DFW area and, no, you can't go home again.

We moved to Delaware knowing no one here. (One of our kids moved here shortly after we did). Never having been here except maybe a short drive across the state once when traveling. Overall, we far prefer Delaware to Texas and in many ways I am more at home here than Texas. I like our house in many many ways and am quite content with it and our neighborhood, etc.

How is it not like home? In some ways, there is just a huge difference between Texas and Delaware. We have a basement now and we didn't before. I like it but it is different. We have a mini split for AC plus a backup oil boiler. That is just utterly foreign to me. I do sometimes feel that there is a lot here that I just don't know because it just isn't how things are in Texas. I am not saying the way in Texas was better or worse. It is just that the locales are different enough that it is different. For some things, it is just like being in a foreign country and not knowing how things work.

Still as times go on we learn more and experience more. I just don't have that over 60 years of comfort with knowing how to do X and X is everything. It isn't bad. Going to the DMV in Delaware is a far more pleasant experience. I was stunned when I applied for my driver's license and walked out of the building with it. And there are lots of other things like that. And, of course, I don't know who to call for things. I have to find new vendors or contractors, etc. I mean I had to do that when I moved within Texas so this is not that different.

However, I can't imagine any circumstance under which I would move back to Texas. I have no plans to ever move from here although now that I have moved halfway across the country I know I can do it so it maybe wouldn't bother me to do it again if I needed to.

 

[Koolau]

Yesterday I talked with a young lady when I was getting some outdoor licenses from a small-town store. She and her husband moved here from the south to this quite small town and love it.

The winters have been an eye opener, but she says she loves them now. She just loves the kindness, quietness, the slow pace of life and would no way ever move back to the rat race of the overpopulated area she lived all her live.

She said this is home and will die here never to go back to the high-speed life and rudeness of people there ever again.

The visit we had showed me again how lucky I am to be born and live in a place I treasure. Rural area not for all people isn't for everyone, and I get that.

I do think moves can be great and feel like people have lived there forever if you have an open mind and find the treasures of the area and learn to apply them. There really isn't any perfect place all have pros and cons; it comes down your interests I would say.

street, you tempt me to come visit your great state. But, if I do, it won't be until summer! Thanks for your wonderful narrative. (See you about July!)

 

[street]

street, you tempt me to come visit your great state. But, if I do, it won't be until summer! Thanks for your wonderful narrative. (See you about July!)

You are always welcome, Sir Koolau>

 

[aja8888]

street, you tempt me to come visit your great state. But, if I do, it won't be until summer! Thanks for your wonderful narrative. (See you about July!)

Better check the Montana calendar to see what week in July summer is scheduled for!

 

[Koolau]

Better check the Montana calendar to see what week in July summer is scheduled for!

That's what I thought about Maine when I visited during their brief summer (about July 1 to August 1).

 

[audreyh1]

We drove all the way across Montana one September. We were following the Missouri River/Lewis and Clark Trail in our RV. We started at St. Louis MO at the end of July and crossed many states. Spent most of September crossing MT (it’s a big state!) stopping in several towns, all the way to Lolo Pass near Missoula. It was a great trip.

 

[aja8888]

When I worked for ARCO in the mid 1980's, I did a few power upgrade projects at ARCO's aluminum smelter in Columbia Falls (previous Anaconda facility). I used to stay in Kalispell on those visits. I also did some oil and gas work in Montana in places you never heard of.

 

[DrRoy]

I lived in one place through age 21, and that was home for a long time. Then during most of my career, I never lived longer than 5 years anywhere, until landing here (in MI) in 1998. The new places felt like home after a couple years. It has here now for ages.

BYW, I love Alan Parsons Project. Saw him live a couple years ago.

 

[steady saver]

In Connecticut, your property tax rate depends on which town you live in. My current annual property tax is $15,661

ours were $10,182 on a 2400 sq ft home in Texas...