I was 13. 8th grade. Sitting on my front porch in a late Toledo autumn evening. What’s weird is that I was with my sister, and we were in fact not at each other’s throats. We were on the steps and she was relaying to me her dilemma about not knowing what “type” of person she was. Unbeknowst to me, my older sibling was struggling with an issue that I would later inherit, much to the same degree but with a different outcome.

My sister’s (and now my own) issue was that she was torn between what type of person she was at heart. She knew a large portion of her wanted to live in a big city, to be immersed in diversity and culture, soaking up the vitality and open-mindedness of the sea of people around her. But she also had the nagging notion of wanting her own little plot of land, a retreat where she could hunker-down and focus on the things in life that mattered to her. Hell, farming wasn’t even out of the question.

So here I am today, several years into the same battle. She grew up, moved east and is stubbornly adherent to her ubran lifestyle. Me on the otherhand? I was torn as well. I love the cultural aspect of big cities. I love the graffiti, the skateboarding kids downtown, the scent of importance and tradition that hangs in the air in larger metropolitan areas. I thought I could be the city mouse just like my sister. So I grew up, went to college in a reasonably large city and decided it wasn’t for me. Sure, the art museums are awesome. The bars, if you have unclaimed amounts of cash to frivolously toss around, would be splendid and chic. But it’s not me. It’s not mine. I miss my space, my privacy and most of all, grass.

So I’m looking into buying land. No, not a house (although I continue to watch the market). Just land. I’m not sure how far I can stretch my dollar, but I want to buy some land, and not in a subdevelopment. The trick is, for me at least, is chosing a city that’s big and friendly but has outlying areas that prove comfortable and retreatable while still leaving only a short jaunt to the city for Culture.

But would I be missing out? I don’t really like the suburban mindset of “let’s sprawl-out all commercial shopping areas and make obscenely large outdoor malls that have the potential to be abandoned in a few years if business dries up.” There’s the ever-increasing need to “expand” in suburbs, taking over everything and moving further and further into the cherished countrysides only to build clone-like houses in a development pairing a cheesy adjective with a boring noun (Windswept Farms, Fallen Leaf Estates). But most of all, it’s the suburban people that I’m not sure I could ever stomach. The grossly-stereotyped-majority of them lack sincere individuality. So many people I know that seem like such great friends just up and decide to build a cookie-cutter house on a plot that costs some nausiatingly high amount of money only to ensure that their next door neighbors will in fact now be *ten* feet on either side of them, as opposed to eight. That’s not me either. I don’t want to surrender my indivduality to a housing development committee or standard architecture and minimal backyard.

I suppose that the moral of this story is that perhaps I’ll never be *completely* happy with my choice. If i live in a large city, I’ll miss my breathing room. If I live in the suburbs, it’ll mean instant death to my spirit. If I live in the country, I’ll be ever fearful of the slowly encroaching Army of Soccer Moms. But I’ll take my chances.

So come visit me in the country. You can paint my barn with your graffiti and your many children can skateboard until their hearts are content w/o fear of the five-oh’s busting up their fun. We can have our own art gallery, music studio and hip bar all in my barn. There will be no paying to park and no one trying to wash your windshield. But bring some ammo to ward of the advancing Enemy, won’t you?