My brief Holiday Hiatus in Colorado has finally come to an end. I’m now in New Mexico. In another couple of days I’ll resume my trek westward and then take my final right turn north to my new home and whatever awaits there. I chose this rather round-about route in order to maximize my sofa-surfing opportunities and minimize my exposure to high mountain passes and their attendant multi-foot snowfall. I did buy some more equipment for the van in Denver, namely snow chains, but I hope to leave the packaging intact so I can return them when I get to Seattle. The van is performing admirably as long as the wind is light or from behind. Any forward component to the breeze and the fuel economy goes from bad to sad. I have noted actual blood oozing from my Visa card when I swipe it at the pump. For all that the trip has been worth it as I have had the opportunity to spend some time with friends and family whom I haven’t seen in a while.
But I am undertaking about the longest diagonal road trip you can make in the United States. When you factor in my little side trips to Kansas and Colorado I will end up ticking off about 4,500 miles. As you might imagine it is not a trip I want to repeat in the near future. When I was first considering the Pacific Northwest as a possible place to settle I spent a lot of time on preliminary research to minimize the chances of having to endure that reverse transcontinental nightmare. I delved into the geography, economics, demographics, and social aspects of the Pacific Northwest. I looked at all sorts of places from small towns to cities. I scoured the internet for local happenings and annual events. All of this collecting, collating, and reducing just to answer the question: Will I like it there? My boots-on-the-ground experience there a month ago gave some real-world validation to my search and my epiphany on The Center of All Things clinched the deal.
Despite all this care and concern the question I still get most of all is: “What the hell are you thinking?” This week I’d like to address your concerns and go into a bit more depth on some of the factors that influenced my ultimate decision.
The Number One Worry I still hear is how I’m going to handle the weather. I thought I covered this in my earlier posts but it still tops the chart. I don’t want to spend more words on it so just remember: there is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing. At the very worst I’ve got some shopping in my future. No worries there.
When I’m not working it looks like I’ll be busy. My research showed the Puget Sound area as unique in its recreational offerings. Within the Seattle city limits there are amazing venues for music. Everything from cutting edge to a full symphony orchestra. There are museums, lectures, art festivals, a zoo and an arboretum. There are races for vehicles made from power tools. Seattle has a great diversity of restaurants, parks for walking, water sports like rowing and sailing, and a large and growing selection of paths for biking and skating. When the luster from those choices fades it’s just a short ride out of town to hiking, skiing, and the beach. What’s not to like?
So we’re at: Weather: check; Fun Stuff: check. That leaves the most critical factor of all – the people. Yeah, yeah, yeah… whatever. I know what I wrote over the past few weeks but I refer you way-back-when to Week Number Two’s posting to give you a clue to catch. Regardless. Getting a feel for “People” is tough. There are the general demographics such as age and income distribution across the region and within a local area. I used maps-n-stats.com for this high level view. It was interesting not only how different one area of the country is from another but also how diverse we are within much smaller areas. Several of the areas I looked into passed these tests but I needed to look at the people side of the equation much closer. I had to take these broad demographic patterns and reduce the granularity down. Way down. Down to the level of the individual.
I used Match.com.
Hang on. Hang on. Not like that. OK well, maybe like that but only a little. My goal was to see what the people that lived in an area thought of themselves. Among all the sites available on the internet Match.comis unique for helping with my search. I know all of you have gone wandering through Match.com for whatever reason. But there may be one among you who just landed from Mars and hasn’t yet spent any time on Match.com. Some background may be in order. The world of “online dating” – something of a non sequitur – is based on the premise that it is much better to get to know someone really well, to understand their hopes and fears, to come to truly like them before you meet them and realize that your first date with this dead-beat loser is also going to be your last. This is in complete opposition to the model that worked in the “real world” for so many millennia where one could check a potential mate off the list based on an ill-timed remark around the campfire. Hopes, while dashed, are not shattered and life goes on. This time-proven strategy saved all the effort getting to know someone that is wasted in the online world. Nevertheless “online dating” is extraordinarily popular among those not wanting to go out, sit around some dark bar, and watch everybody else getting lucky.
In this genre Match.com is the largest web based meet market. To use the site you first create a “profile”. This starts out with your basic physical details – photos help – goes into your likes and dislikes and gives you room to detail – i.e. make up what you think will “work” – your thoughts about your hopes and fears and wants and desires in your own words. You are also given room to come up with a catchy one-liner to increase your appeal and up your chances to getting a desirable member of your target demographic to click on “Send Message”. You respond, chat for a couple of weeks, send flirtatious e-mails back and forth, talk on the phone and eventually set up the soon-to-be-disastrous first date. Since the memberships of these sites are so large “success stories” are statistically inevitable enough occur to keep the TV commercials flowing and the unwitting millions plugged in and hopeful.
But that is not what I wanted. I’ve never been content to use a screwdriver when a hammer would do. I looked at Match.com merely as another tool that needed to be applied quite differently than originally intended. While none of these sites perform any verification on the accuracy of your personal claims Match.com allows you to play make-believe to a degree none of the others approaches. My search had a very specific goal.
I was looking for me.
Not specifically Me but people who think that they’re just like I think I am. What Match.com lets me do is duplicate my profile as search criteria without having to create a whole new profile. I click on all the boxes for physical attributes, age, interests, etc. With the click of my mouse, I alter my gender, temporarily of course, and search to find Me.
This can be interesting. Some geographic areas looking for Me returned a selection of guys wearing wife-beaters and sporting tattoos that said things like “ARLENE”. Clearly their view of themselves and my view of myself, while similar on paper, are – to be kind – skewed from reality. Other areas show a very flat demographic where everybody “like me” would have words like “retired military” or “don’t bother me on Sundays during football season”. There is absolutely nothing wrong with either of those but, come on, a littledemographic variety might be in order?
While this top level analysis is interesting its power comes as a measure of relative comparability. I can use this divergence in self-image to calibrate the possible differences for people outside my initial narrow search. This broader view gives me a pretty good idea of whether or not there will be people in an area with whom I could be friends. Even being a writer it would be nice not to eat alone all the time.
When I looked at Seattle I hit the mother lode. There, guys who think they are like I think I am can be summarized by two defining traits: “eclectic” and “totally-in-denial”. The range of interests and histories exposed in their profiles would put most renaissance men to shame. There were no taboo interests, no gender guided roles. “Cooking” and “watching sports” would show up side-by-side. “Knitting” and “scuba diving” was an odd but frequent pairing. In all of these self-evaluations variety was the only constant. These men are of an age while not yet in possession of their 401-Ks can count the years remaining to that fateful date on less than the fingers of one hand. Despite that you would see these guys hanging one-handed from a rock outcrop while they tie a butterfly knot with the other. Others would show themselves bursting inverted off a ski jump with a mountainous backdrop or flipping their kite board twenty feet in the air. Some have photos looking not unlike my great-great-grandfather in an 1800s vintage tin-type and yet think they are able to describe themselves with words like “look young for my age”. Just like me.
In Seattle I found a group of people that look at themselves the same way as I do me. Sure, our self-images may be as close to reality as a vacation on the moon but we use all the exact same fictions – delusions if you prefer – to tell the way we look at ourselves. This makes us, in point of fact, perfect matches. I am now left with something of a dilemma. My question has changed from “is there anybody in Seattle I can be friends with?” to “is there anybody I can’t?”