Wow, I can’t believe how quickly time is passing. I guess that’s cliché, and I’ve written something along those lines various times. I’ve been meaning to write here more often, but it just seems like I am always reading or writing for something else, and when I’m not, I don’t want to be writing more (unless it’s stupid Facebook, which is more just phatic). But there have been important changes recently:
This is day 12 of having cold symptoms. At this point, it’s just the occasional cough, but man, it has sucked. Especially as I’ve found I just want to rest more and I really need to be writing more. But health first, I guess.
I also quit smoking on Sunday, and I’ve been doing fairly well: only 2 cigarettes this week, and two Black & Mild cigars on my birthday Wednesday. At this point, I’m thinking about my cravings for cigarettes a lot less, which is great. I can’t tell if certain “symptoms” are symptoms of my cold or nicotine withdrawals (like the occasional headache or fatigue)—or perhaps even both.
I’ve wanted to live in a city for years, and have instead been living in small college town after small college town. There’s a cute little town just north of State College named Bellefonte, with old Victorian architecture and just this pleasant feeling to it. I decided I needed a change of scenery last weekend and went and got coffee at this cute little coffee shop in downtown Bellefonte, where I worked for a few hours. I could see myself living here next year: getting out of State College, being in a quieter, more gorgeous area. I’ll be dissertating, so it’d be good to get away from things and be in a cute, quiet town.
So I’m back in Bellefonte this afternoon, after stopping in Peru (a village! I am so not used to places being actually signed as “village”) to get my PA driver’s license (finally). I’m going to read and get some brainstorming done for some projects. And I’m sitting in the window of this coffee shop, and a group of preschoolers or kindergartners walked by with their teacher. Some waved, but my favorite was the little boy who picked his nose and flicked his booger with flair.
Having lived in Bellefonte for a year, I wouldn’t suggest it. I know a lot of people in the department are really excited by living in Bellefonte, but I really, really hated living there. Of course, part of the problem was that we lived in duplex with some really, really skeezy people, but, more importantly, the thing that drove me nuts about Bellefonte was the commute. I hated having to constantly worry about how I was getting to and from school when it was snowing (as it often was). Also, the time I wasted having to drive to and from campus every day (or even just three times a week for teaching) really bugged me. And the fact that you end up getting assigned crappy parking as a student meant having to ride the Blue Loop in from the parking lot whenever you go to campus. In addition to that, if you go out drinking at night in State College, you have to worry about driving home. We actually figured out that the money we were saving in rent was being spent on gasoline. I just don’t see why people would willingly choose a 25 minute commute to State College when they didn’t have to.
Additionally, I find that Bellefonte makes State College look like a bastion of progressive liberalism. Sure it’s quaint, but as one of our neighbors used to say (he was one of the 10 or so black people in town), he gets a police escort whenever he goes out jogging.
As Paul Youngquist once said to me about living in Bellefonte: “if you already live in the middle of nowhere, why would you want to move further away?”
Anyway, to make a long story short, I hated, hated, hated my time in Bellefonte. What a dump.
Thanks, Andrew. Those all exactly the reasons I chose not to live in Bellefonte when I moved here, even when I was desperate for an apartment and couldn’t find one in State College.
I think what I’m missing is something “romantic” about life, and perhaps I’m just pulled into the quaint beauty of Bellefonte. State College’s romance wore off after about three hours of being in town…
To counter Paul’s wisdom, though, we might also say, “Why live in a small town that can’t accept it’s a small town and is trying way too hard to not be (in all the wrong ways), when you can actually live in a small town that’s okay with being a small town?”
But in the last analysis (haha), I probably won’t live in Bellefonte anyway. The commute would kill me, esp. on those late nights of working.