How California and Arizona can make you a kinder, gentler, more patient person


As someone who grew up in the midwest, and who lives in Arizona now, I'm fascinated by the different attitudes there towards work and leisure. In Minneapolis, I call it the "midwestern work ethic" and in California and Arizona I call it "being laid back".

Whether these attitudes are good or bad depends on what you value. Growing up in Minneapolis, I was taught to value the kind of hard work that made me deliver newspapers in the snow. I was taught at an early age to save money, to value this type of accomplishment. I did well in school, I got good grades, and at the age of 18 was fully immersed in this way of thinking.

And then I moved to Arizona, and my transition began to becoming kinder, gentler, and more patient. I met people for whom writing down little marks in a ledger wasn't the whole meaning of life. I met people who valued time with family, with friends. Yes, I'm still anxious, and "twitchy" but I've seen what life can be like away from the "midwestern work ethic".

Now don't get me wrong here. If you have that strong drive to "do it now" and know how escrow works, I'm happy for you. I still have so much of my old midwestern work ethic left in me now that I can manage myself, and my finances, quite nicely. I always wear a watch, I can tell you what day it is, I know what I'll be doing next week. I consider that part of being a responsible adult.

And then I moved to Santa Barbara, California, and I really got a chance to see what "laid back" means. If you've lived there, you know. There's just about no sense of time at all there. Whether it's spring or fall, or morning or afternoon, it's all the same. I often say that I "wasted three years of my life" there, but what I saw began my transformation. I started becoming a Californian, and it worried my friends back east.

For the first time in my life I just sat on the beach and watched ocean waves. At first I would carry a sketch book (because you're always supposed to be accomplishing something, you know) and then I would just go there. I would borrow a neighbor's dog and walk.

To this day I struggle with making a balance between my "midwestern work ethic" and taking the time to enjoy this beautiful world. And I'd like to believe that the balance for me has tipped. I have lost my interest in the types of work-work-work accomplishments that some people value, and I've seen things that I know that they won't see, or even look at.

No one who knows me would describe me mostly as kind, gentle, and patient, but when people do, I'm flattered.

Image at the top of this post: Me in Santa Barbara in 1983. The tee shirt says "Goodbye Minnesota, hello California." This was a young man who was learning to "chill out".
Become a PhD (Phoenix History Detective) with Brad today on Patreon!

Click here to become a Patron!
History Adventuring posts are shared there daily including "then and now" photos, billboards, aerials, videos, and super high-definition photos of historic Phoenix, Arizona. Discounts for seniors, students, teachers, and veterans.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more