So... How's Life?

As a guy who does much less cool Sharpie art myself, I had to throw a Jessie Armand clip in here.  It's an old saying, "Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life."  It sure looks like Jessie enjoys his work.

"I wish this was a fun city." -Wake Forest University student in my taxi in 2012, talking about Winston-Salem, NC

So... how's life?  Isn't it great to wake up in the morning, excited about the day's events?  After a good night's sleep you look forward to the challenges and excitement of your job.  It hardly feels like work because you enjoy it so much.  Even better, you live in a vibrant, fun city with great art, music, and sports scenes.  Your city has lots of good, interesting, well-paying jobs available to move on to, should yours get boring.  Life is pretty dang good, isn't it?

How many sarcastic comments did you make to yourself while reading that last paragraph?  Let's face it, most people's lives don't even come close to what I just described.  After the incredibly slow recovery after The Great Recession of 2008, millions and millions of people are working hard just to scrape by.  Kids, church, sports, and other activities seem to take every extra minute and every extra dime they have.  Then when they do have a bit of free time, the go do the same thing they've done a thousand other times, whether it's go to the local bar, take the kids to the park, or maybe a canoeing trip down a local river.  For the vast majority of people, pure, unadulterated fun is pretty low on the "to do" list.

Yet there are people out there who really enjoy what they do.  They truly love the place they live.  It offers them places to be alone and places to be with family and friends.  There are new experiences to be had and new areas to explore.  There are people who truly love their town or city or region.  Are you one of those people?  Probably not.  It's likely you don't think your town or city is completely lame, like the title of this blog.  But you feel you're missing out by living where you do.  Sound familiar?

I grew up in a series of small towns in Ohio as a kid, then spent a year living in Carlsbad, New Mexico, then went to high school in Boise, Idaho.  Although I really liked all the outdoor activities in Boise, I still felt there was an exciting world out there that I was missing.  I can't count the number of kids I met growing up who dreamed of escaping their boring small towns.

It's not that small towns and cities are bad.  It's just that they often don't have the scenes people are really interested in.  A part of why I'm writing this is to let you know that it's possible to create cool and interesting scenes anywhere.  They may not be very big, but you can usually find one or two people with similar interests to get things started.  You may still move on to a bigger city at some point, but learning to build a good creative scene where you are can have all kinds of perks.  It may even turn into a career... the kind of career that finds you waking up excited about the day ahead.  It actually happens to some people.  I know firsthand, it has happened to me.

Yes, there are millions of boring jobs out there.  When you're young, you often have to work whatever job you can find to make a little money and gain experience.  But you don't have to work one of those boring jobs your whole life.  You can work towards something more rewarding.  You may even make your town or city a better place by building your own creative scene of some kind.  So... again... how's life?  Do you have any ideas bubbling up in your mind right now?

Thoughts on the college student I quoted from Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  For a city of a little over 200,000, Winston has a really good, cohesive art scene, centered on Trade Street, downtown.  The music scene isn't bad either.  The bar, restaurant, and coffee shop scene has grown quite a bit over the last 20 years in the downtown area, with help from civic leaders.  What the student in my taxi thought was missing was different social scenes to explore.  After talking to her, we concluded that if there were late night buses to take college students to and from Winston to the other two cites nearby, Greensboro and Highpoint, it would allow the thousands of college students to meet people outside their city.  That's really not a very big thing to accomplish to make the city much more attractive to college students and young adults. 

There are at least 20 million Americans who can't find a good paying job right now.  Personally, I'm creating my own job.  Check out my blog about this process, Create Your Own Dang Job.

Scenes I've Seen

Lots of great things have come out of Orange County, California.  But Social Distortion is my favorite.  Music scenes are such a crucial part of creative scenes.  Not only is it fun to go see live shows, especially in small venues, but music is one of the things that helps us all keep going when we're down.  I couldn't count the number of times I've listened to Social Distortion to raise my spirits during a tough time. 

Straight Outta Millersburg

Here's a big scene those of you who know me wouldn't expect.  No, not a classic punk rock club or skatepark.  This is a look at the Amish Country around Millersburg, Sugar Creek, and Berlin, Ohio.  During my fourth grade year, I actually went to school with some Amish kids, and we lived in a big farmhouse, which I loved.  For those who don't know, the Amish, and similar groups like Mennonites refuse to use today's technology in their every day lives.  Many travel around in their horse and buggies, like the one you see above.  They farm the land, and produce all kinds of home made foods, furniture, and other crafts.

In one of the videos I watched before picking this one, they said that the Ohio Amish Country now gets more visitors a year than Cedar Point, the biggest amusement park in Ohio.  That's over four million people a year that come to visit a big group of people who initially wanted to simple lifestyle away from today's modern world.  As I pointed out before, scenes have a way of just evolving, and often turn into something no one expected early on. 

I was last in this area of Amish Country in 2010, and I took a couple photos of horse and buggies that are now in an Amish store here in Kernersville, North Carolina.