Well, I am now at the end of my sixth month in my once and current hometown, and I thought now would be a good time to run through how the experience of moving to a small town has been so far. I just hosted my first ever Easter Dinner, so let’s see some pics to start off with:
Bottom line up front, I can say my quality of life has greatly improved since moving back to Spartanburg. I do not regret the decision. But there have been ups and downs.
My work setting has been a big adjustment – I am not ready to say if it is an improvement or not, though. I work from home now, remotely, for a job that is based in Atlanta. All my adult life, I would commute to an office downtown. And that was something I really enjoyed. I like the office atmosphere, and I like working face to face with other people. I like wearing professional clothes, and starched shirts. But my job changed, everyone else on my team immediately exercised the work-remotely option. And there weren’t other people in my office. Literally, days on end without seeing another soul there. So here I am in a house now, by myself, in a small town, doing the same job. It is very similar to sitting in an office all day by myself. But the improvement is, I can work on my laptop on my porch, or elsewhere in my house, or I can do something around the house on the days when things are slow. The downside is that this can be a bit lonely at times. So to anyone considering a move like mine, take that into consideration.
Generally speaking, though, the first couple months were solidly ups. I was settling in, the weather was nice initially, and I had friends over a couple times. I even had a pretty decent, but small, Christmas party. But then came Christmas break and my heater died. Once the heater was fixed (two weeks later), I hit a deer. Once the car was repaired from the deer, I had to have all 4 tires replaced. And as a backdrop to most of that, the weather has been wet and gray for all of January and much of February – Apparently this is how an el nino winter looks here:
So things have been unnecessarily expensive, and the weather has been a bit depressing. But that is it for the negatives.
I’ve decided to be more involved in the community here than I ever was in Atlanta. It just seemed that if I did not try to get involved here then why did I bother moving. To that end, and first up, I’ve signed up to be a poll manager during elections. This is a small one, because I will only be tasked with this a few days out of the year, and that will mainly only be during even-numbered years. But since I have been assigned to the precinct in which I vote, which is also the precinct in which I grew up, I have already met a good number of people from the long long ago. That’s been interesting. In some cases, the person looks wonderful and they have clearly had a great life. In other cases…. Well the saying in the south, borrowing a phase from the equestrian community, is that a person just looks “rode hard and put away wet.” But they may think the same of me.
I’ve also joined the board of the County Historical Association. By American standards, Spartanburg county is old. The Creek and Cherokee tribes lived in the area many centuries before European colonists arrived around 1750. But prior to the Creek and Cherokee, there is evidence of much earlier inhabitation of the area, with soap stone quarries dating back 3000 to 5000 years. The historical association deals, mainly, with three properties that are much more recent: The Price House, the Seay House, and Walnut Grove Plantation. This last property, Walnut Grove Plantation, is hosting a ballon festival in April and I have volunteered to come dressed as Benjamin Franklin. I’ll post pics of that, for sure.
The Historical Association is also gearing up for Rev250. Yeah, in my first meeting with them I had to ask what that was as well. It will be a yearlong celebration of the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. Many of my fellow GenX’ers will remember well the bicentennial – That was 50 years ago. Ouch. (Out there in the world somewhere is a German couple, who visited DC in the summer of 1976 and snapped a pic of 9 year old me touring the capital dressed as George Washington.) What was more painful was having a young archivist with the Historical Association refer to items she has found relating to the bicentennial as “artifacts.” Anyhoo, at one of the events they are planning they will need someone dressed as George III. I eagerly chucked my name into the hat for that. Again, I will let you know how it goes.
Beyond that, I’ve been keeping busy around the house. I’ve ripped out liriope from flower beds to prepare them for other plantings. That was a lot of work! I’ve tilled and amended the soil, then put in whatever plants I could find, that I wanted. Finally I’ve moved nearly two tons of mulch onto flower beds.
Now all I have to do is wait for everything to fill in. But everything is currently in bloom, and it looks incredible.
I’ve worked on my sunroom, trying to get that ready to host gatherings. Here is how it looks so far:
I couldn’t figure out what color I wanted so I kept painting patches. After a while, with everyone saying they liked the patchwork paint job, I just left it like that. I still need furniture. AND, my plan was to have a minisplit installed before summer this year. Well, the estimate was far more than double what I was expecting, so that has been kicked down the road for a least a year.
And that is the update on me, and what all I’ve been up to. I am still happy I have made the move.
I will post more soon.
Will's GenX Adventure 