Last updated on November 26, 2023
The Autistic Me is now an Austin me. More precisely, a northern suburb of Austin, Texas, me.
The break in blog posts, podcast recording, and many other life activities was the direct result of coordinating the adoption of our children and a move halfway across the continent. The last time we moved a similar distance, it was my wife and I, with no children and not much furniture. This time, it was moving a complete household of four people and all the stuff we had accumulated.
Moving from California to Minnesota was a challenge. Moving to Pennsylvania was promising, but then turned into a major challenge. I loved arriving… and then we lost some beloved feline friends. We moved into a new house in Western PA after the first became a nightmare… and we lost another cat we loved. I never quite recovered from that rough start.
The jobs in Pennsylvania were never quite a good fit, either. I was teaching what I didn’t want to teach, in places that didn’t seem to understand my personality or physical limitations. That made for a long few years.
However, Minnesota gave us some life-long friends, and so did Pennsylvania. We doubled the size of our family in Pennsylvania, too, and that alone offsets a lot.
Winters in Minnesota and Pennsylvania didn’t work out so well for me. I broke bones, bruised ribs, and damaged my eyes. Ice contributed to two solo car accidents, one involving my wife and one with me behind the wheel. I slid sideways picking her up from the airport… following a trip she took to Minneapolis! To say we dislike ice and snow is an understatement.
I never liked the heat or foul air quality of California’s Central Valley. The move to Texas certainly returns us to heat.
This will be it, we hope. Yes, we dreamed of Pennsylvania being our “forever home” as well, but it was obvious after a few years that the economic situation of the Pittsburgh region isn’t all it is hyped up to be. The population is aging and shrinking. Schools and churches are closing. We had to exit or risk being trapped in an economic dead zone.
Within hours of applying for a job north of Austin I had an interview. Then, I had a tentative offer.
That’s why we are in Texas. There are jobs here! There is growth. There is a future.
Give me a few weeks, but I promise The Autistic Me (and my other blog projects) will return to a more frequent schedule.
If you aren’t willing to move, it is difficult to move ahead in the United States. Data suggest that mobility has parallel and complementary meanings: household mobility leads to economic mobility. We’re putting the research to an applied test.
I knew I had to return to teaching K12 if I wanted any security. We also knew that meant moving. Education is a good indicator of economic health, too, and Texas is certainly expanding educational supports locally and, to a lesser extent, statewide.
We want this to be our forever home. It was chosen with that in mind. It is a one-story, simple house, in a community that’s suburban, not exurban as we were in Pennsylvania. Everything we might want is within a few minutes, not an hour or more away. In Pennsylvania, I could spend more than two hours trying to get to work, even when I worked less than 40 miles from home. In Texas, the drive to work will be 15 minutes and winter weather won’t increase the commute to hours.
No, I do not like moving. Nobody does. I hate the disorder and I hate all the flaws I find in a space.
I had such high hopes for Pennsylvania that I am worried that we might repeat the cycle: a promising restart ends up no better than the previous location. Still, I’ve never found work so fast, and never found a job doing precisely what I wanted to do. That’s an amazing feeling.
Keep following along and I’ll be posting more soon.