{"id":3071,"date":"2011-09-07T23:23:40","date_gmt":"2011-09-08T03:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adam-jackson.net\/blog\/?p=3071"},"modified":"2011-09-07T23:23:40","modified_gmt":"2011-09-08T03:23:40","slug":"one-year-in-new-hampshire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2011\/09\/07\/one-year-in-new-hampshire\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2605 One Year in New Hampshire"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Lake<\/a><\/p>\n

It was always my intention to share with you a post that could measure up to my experiences and emotions around the last 12 months. I found myself thinking about moments as they happened that would be appropriate for this post. I thought there was a way to share New Hampshire with you, to share my life with you, to share the now with you. It was easy to sell my readers on San Francisco or sell them on Florida. You\u2019ve all been to or know quite a bit about Florida beaches and San Francisco coffee shops. Most of my readers know San Francisco and many have lived there and many more desire living there. Everyone understood why I wanted to move there and what drew me to the penninsula in Northern California where hippies and gays go to escape from the rest of the oppresive world. I was neither a hippy or a gay but maybe I thought I was a bit misunderstood. Either way, people understood San Francisco enough to picture it when I spoke of being there or going there or leaving there.<\/p>\n

On Saturday, I stood in line at Trader Joe\u2019s in Boston with a cart full of things I really didn\u2019t need. I drove 2 hours to go there as I hadn\u2019t bought goods from a TJ\u2019s in a year. The last time I entered their store was on my last week in SF to stock up on wine and goodies before moving east. Telling the checkout woman that I had driven 2 hours to get there didn\u2019t phase her too much but telling her I was from San Francisco and she began to talk about how beautiful it is and how much she loved visiting and that a friend lives there now and on and on. San Francisco is this place that people just get and they either think it\u2019s this heavenly expensive place or a place full of queers and hippies. Either way, everyone has an opinion. I couldn\u2019t write this about New Hampshire. Maybe Vermont has that sort of symbolism to some where Vermont has gay marriage and farms and is known for being loaded with liberals and Ben & Jerry\u2019s and maple syrup. New Hampshire…well, we just vote in the primaries before anyone else and you can \u201clive free or die\u201d here. Yeah, not as nice as that age old SF cliche of getting high in Golden Gate Park and drinking wine in Napa Valley. Oh well.<\/p>\n

I think that\u2019s why I\u2019ve fought so hard to paint this picture of my new life. I tweet more about the oddities of having to stop for turkeys crossing the road or helping my neighbor cut up a deer and having stew for dinner or my chickens and my garden. I talk about the pounds of snow in my yard and seeing the stars and firing off my gun out in the yard at the targets I set up. I talk about the trees and the seasons and buying all local produce from farmers. I talk about not paying income or sales taxes and I talk about the differences between life in the city and life out here where the nearest mall is 2 hours away. I talk about it so damn much because I\u2019m convinced that so many people will never experience this out of loving city life so much and its conveniences or being too afraid to take that risk of living away from the noise and in a house that doesn\u2019t have cellular service. Every other week, I meet men and women who find my cabin on AirBNB and rent it for $100 a night. They always say to me how lucky I am to have such a getaway and how they\u2019re bummed about going back to the city. Nothing is making them live there. You can escape to a cabin in the woods at any time.<\/p>\n

In between running around in my yard covered in snow wearing only camel leather boots and underwear and raising chickens, I\u2019ve been a part of a tremendous company. I only hope that I can still do this job in 5 years or in 10 years. It\u2019s not the joy of working at a job where we get bonuses or real paid time off. It\u2019s that I am able to raise my hand with an idea, form a commitee, plot, plan and pursue something that inspires me (assuming it\u2019s in my job description) and go after it. Suddenly, here are resources to make this idea a reality. I just turned 25 and I have no college degree. To have the trust and faith from people 10-20 years older than me is a fantastic feeling AND I get to go home to my cabin with the chickens. This is heaven.<\/p>\n

Of course, everything is temporary. It\u2019s an ego play to assume that my hopes and dreams of today will not fizzle tomorrow at my hand or at someone else\u2019s. My job could go away, house burn down or I could be involved in some horrific accident but, most likely, I\u2019ll just decide that it\u2019s time to move to Mumbai or New York or somewhere no one is expecting like Los Angeles and simply start over<\/a> like I have so many times before. I think this is what surprises me most about my current job. You hand this responsibility to someone who has moved across country twice, has no kids or family nearby and who loves to globetrot. To my bosses, don\u2019t worry about me hopping on a plane to anywhere anytime soon with a one-way ticket but, it gives me great pleasure to know that they trust that I won\u2019t and this trust allows me to give it my all and have the push to do that with my peers. When I feel happy about my situation there\u2019s a voice telling me that this will be over soon and this dream will die.<\/p>\n

Some people pursue happiness for a lifetime and never find it. Then, there are those people like me who found it at a young age and fear losing it. I\u2019ve been ear to ear grinning since I got a media badge to Macworld at 15 and since I was published in a magazine and when I got that awesome management job at Apple and when I realized my dream of living in San Francisco and actually made it work. When does this happiness run out? At what point does my hopefull and joyous outlook on each day turn into sorrow and grim? I hope never but hope is a farce. Hope is shit. Either way, I hope I\u2019m this happy on my death bed. That would be nice.<\/p>\n

I wrote most of the day to day awesome things about my time in New Hampshire in the post around my 25th birthday (2 weeks ago)<\/a>. Those things brought me happiness but things and actions aren\u2019t sustainable. Something you did 20 years ago can\u2019t keep you pushing forward today. We have to create happiness within and those things are in the past. The most important and most useful thing I learned in my one year in New Hampshire is that you should never underestimate an experience.<\/p>\n

I boarded a plane for Boston over a year ago and hopped on a 3 hour bus ride to interview for this job<\/a>. I arrived in New Hampshire and was blown away. The mountains and trees and nice people. I had a gin & tonic at a bar and it was only $5.50 for a pint size mixed drink. The bartender that night, Eric remembered my name when I moved to town 2 months later and my 1st drink as a New Hampshire citizen was free. The time I spend here has been froth with new experiences. I have friends that move from LA to SF to NYC at least once a year. The cities are vastly different but what you do in them is easily interchangeable. You can get a coffee and go to a speakeasy and miss your train in all three of those cities. You can work at a scrappy startup and pay too much in rent and complain about the homeless and boast about the beer selection of a bar or that you live above a Starbucks. Those things are city things. What I learned is that, outside of the cities, there are people living their lives. They go without Starbucks but they grow their own food. These people have kids and most of them will go to college and most will come back to this town and raise their kids. There are only 5 restaurants but most people at at home and we rent movies instead of hitting the cinema. There is life up in the mountains. I even have high speed Internet and cable.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

A friend said to me before I moved here that people move to New Hampshire to retire. As long as I live here, I\u2019ll remember those words. It was a very hurtful thing to say to me considering I was moving there and, she was absolutely wrong. I\u2019m far from retired and so are my neighbors. I have met the most incredible people here and they won\u2019t turn their back on you when someone wealthier or more desirable comes along with a nicer car. They don\u2019t compare apps on their phones or go to the hottest and newest bars or hop around jobs or screw people over. They are kind and real and honest. It\u2019s not just New Hampshire, this is any place that\u2019s outside of the cities. I just feel angry at her for saying that. By moving here, I was signing my death certificate and that\u2019s a cruel thing to say. I have never felt more alive in my entire life. Just because I can\u2019t run into Gap on my walk home from work to buy overpriced jeans doesn\u2019t mean I\u2019m retired.<\/p>\n

New Hampshire has taught me a lot and I\u2019d like to stay here for a while and I feel stronger about NH than I ever did about SF. I never thought I\u2019d write that. I just did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was always my intention to share with you a post that could measure up to my experiences…\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_custom_appearance":"","csco_disable_excerpt_posts_layout":false,"csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-life","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb3IC4-Nx","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1027,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2010\/10\/11\/photo-post-one-month-in-new-england\/","url_meta":{"origin":3071,"position":0},"title":"\u2605 Photo Post – One Month in New England","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"October 11, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I started my new job on September 7th after flying out to New Hampshire on the 3rd and, in 3 days, buying a car, finding a place to rent and buying my 1st batchof groceries. 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