11-17-2011, 03:27 PM
When we were first thinking about buying land and eventually relocating to Hawaii my first thought was to hit the forums. At least 80% of the posts from locals (not on this forum, the others) were incredibly negative: I wouldn't be able to afford it, nobody would like me, the price of everything is too high, the weather is too (hot, dry, wet, windy, cloudy, sunny), my pets would be killed, I would get robbed, I wouldn't like the bugs... you get the picture. Basically if there was any way to verbally motivate me NOT to move to Hawaii, I read it. Since my experiences visiting Hawaii were nearly the opposite of everything I read, I took it with a grain of salt (BTW, the salt air will corrode everything it touches) and just figured that people either wanted to save paradise for themselves, didn't want more competition for jobs, didn't like outsiders, or have been jaded in the past.
Then one day we were looking at job applications from the mainland for a job here in Alaska and I noticed I was guilty of the same thing. "Applicant Jones lives in Wyoming where you can buy a huge house on a 100 acre ranch for $30,000. He'll never want to move here where a trailer in a park costs more than that." "Applicant Smith lives in Phoenix. Will never want to deal with 220 inches of rain PLUS 200 inches of snow." I'm sure people in Manhattan do the same thing about a country boy used to living in a barn. I'm sure it happens to some degree in most places. When you see a lot of people come and go due to the challenges of living in your specific environment, community, etc, you get "used" to thinking that most people from the outside won't be able to make it, especially if most of them don't last very long.
Then one day we were looking at job applications from the mainland for a job here in Alaska and I noticed I was guilty of the same thing. "Applicant Jones lives in Wyoming where you can buy a huge house on a 100 acre ranch for $30,000. He'll never want to move here where a trailer in a park costs more than that." "Applicant Smith lives in Phoenix. Will never want to deal with 220 inches of rain PLUS 200 inches of snow." I'm sure people in Manhattan do the same thing about a country boy used to living in a barn. I'm sure it happens to some degree in most places. When you see a lot of people come and go due to the challenges of living in your specific environment, community, etc, you get "used" to thinking that most people from the outside won't be able to make it, especially if most of them don't last very long.