ATLANTA: THE NEW DC

I'm here now. I have exchanged one city for another. The truck is unloaded, although the boxes are not yet unpacked. I am beginning the process of settling in. Beginning. It will be a while before I feel like this is my space, but I am, at least, occupying it.

The purpose of my being here aside, this is in general a positive step - at least as far as the trappings go. Every change is a tradeoff and there are things I will miss about DC (people yes, absolutely, but that goes without saying, I'm talking about the cities themselves in this post) and there are things I will not miss. Atlanta is an improvement in a few areas that most Atlanteans, I find, would not consider an improvement.

Take, for instance, the traffic. Atlanta has horrible traffic, the fourth worst in the nation according to a recent study. But it is not as bad as DC. DC is third. So I made a step in the right direction there. No one here believes me when I try to tell them that I actually find this traffic to be an improvement, but it's nice. I like it. I'm reminded of a story about a farmer who thought his family was too loud and asked a wiseman to help him. The wiseman tells the farmer to bring his cats into the house. When that makes things worse, the farmer complains and the wiseman tells the farmer to bring the dogs into the house, then the chickens, then the horse, then the cow. Finally the farmer gets fed up with this "advice" and begins to put the animals back where they belong. By the time he's done, his house, filled only with his family, seems silent. Well, applying that to my traffic situation, moving from DC to Atlanta is the equivalent of getting rid of that first cow. It's not a big step, but it is a step in the right direction.

The prices here are another nice jump, although this one is a bit more significant. Atlanta does not cost nearly as much as DC. If I were not attempting to live on a grad-student budget, I could even consider buying a house. Not so in DC, it would be hard to find a studio apartment near DC for less than the houses around here.

It's not all positive (tradeoffs, remember), but in general my everyday life has gotten just a little bit easier. Well, the trappings at least. We'll see what gradschool itself does to my stress levels...