I consider my relationship with Fargo overall a good one. But with a lot of relationships until you find that perfect companion, at some point, enough becomes enough and you need to make a change. I hope to elaborate in today’s blog entry on the general experience I’ve had with Fargo.
I moved to Fargo in 2004 after escaping a small town newspaper to return to the safe environs of college by going for a graduate degree. My first apartment was 250 a month, which got me a kitchen and a bedroom. The bathroom was across the hallway, which made locking myself out of my apartment in my jammies a daily possibility. The bathroom also didn’t have a shower, but a small half tub. So every day I washed my hair by sitting cross legged in the tub and using a bucket.
As a graduate student, I didn’t mind this so much, not as much as you would think. Near the end of my grad school time, however, I did mind the fact that I was 90 percent sure the other person upstairs in that house was cooking meth. The smells were as crazy as that guy's teeth and eyes and general lack of weight.
The next door neighbor also found a body just across the tracks one spring. The two aren't connected, but it was time to find somewhere else to live.
I found another studio apartment in a very apartmenty part of Fargo. That worked for a year. In that year, I found a great job related to what I wanted to do with my life – write. And I began to realize that jobs can be fun. Work can be good given the right environment and opportunities. I was proud of what I wrote.
I bought a house, something I never thought would happen.
I also found a fiancé, who, coolest of all coolness, connected with me after reading an article I wrote. This is a secret dream of all writers, probably artists. We were the vaguest of acquaintances in High School from different towns, but she remembered me and did me the great favor of emailing.
Time moved on. The Red Bear closed. Lauerman’s closed. Ralph’s closed. All my favorite haunts became memories.
Fiance moved in with me. Our relationship developed. But there were no steady jobs to be had in a state that we keep hearing is great for jobs. Believe me, she applied for everything and anything. A year of unemployment does a lot of damage to your credit and mental sanity, particularly if you have chronic sinus infections or other health issues. We slowly watched as our resources reached a point where Suze Ormand yells at us in our dreams.
Meanwhile, the awesome things about my job began to dwindle. The pay is great, but the parts I enjoyed were discontinued. I no longer wrote anything I was proud of. The people I worked with left and weren’t replaced, leaving me to take up the slack. They say if you aren’t moving positions every 3 years, you are in a rut. I work with someone who has been doing the same job for 15 years. This place is where careers go to die, and I need to leave.
So for the past year, Fiance and I have been sending out resume after resume. Getting interviews here and there, but never quite sealing the deal.
Likewise, the things people say about owning a house are all things I have come to hate. I hate worrying about shingles, heaters, and the millions of other things that can go wrong with a house that I will have to pay for somehow. I hate having to keep the lawn looking nice and having a hammock that I never use because all the spare time is spent keeping the house from falling apart. I hate having to worry about floods every stinking year. I hate that people think houses are an investment when they really aren’t. House prices over the past 100 years pretty much match inflation. And everything you do to improve it doesn’t really get you back what you put into it. Basically, I feel like selling and buying houses only makes banks and real estate agents money. I think the only reason I got a house was that was what was expected of me – to fit in with the family and social norms. And now that I want to leave, the house thing is tying me down financially until it sells. My biggest fear is that after 4 years in the house, I won’t break even on the sale. As it is, I’ll get maybe 2000, half of which was already spent getting it ready to sell.
So while Fargo was a lifesaver in the beginning, through jobs, unemployment, house ownership, and so on, it has slowly become a trap that I desperately want to escape. I don’t mean this to denigrate people who enjoy Fargo. There are lots of things I have loved. It’s just that most of those things have stopped, or are now vastly outweighed by the negative. I need to move on or, as my coworker who has pretty much the same job as me said recently, “In 10 years, you can be me.”
I don’t think I hid the horror in my eyes well.
I need to get out of this rut. I need to keep trying to become a better writer and be challenged. It would be easy to keep doing this, spewing out the same stories year after year. But that’s what kills souls. At least in my case.
This blog has helped to slow the bleeding. I appreciate every comment and reader. I went from 150 page views in July to 620 in August, and thank you for that. I have found often in my life that when my work stops being creatively satisfying, I quickly find other avenues to release the demons that don’t like me when I settle. I started my Twitter account after 8 months of fruitless job hunting, and it saved me. Thanks for following.
Still hoping to get some help with the move. It’s a bad time of the week for it, so I understand. If I don’t hear by tomorrow, I’ll be looking elsewhere.
People keep asking what my handle will be once I move. Part of me imagines that for a while, even after moving, I will still be metaphorically trapped in Fargo as I try to start the new life. I’ve got some ideas on a new name, but would appreciate suggestions as well.
EscapedFargo, MidwestMess, FargoJones
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