Re-Introduction
Greetings.
My name is Matt Saunders.
Soon I will be 35 years old.
If you've looked at my homepage or followed any of my previous goings-on, you probably know that I am obsessed with music, mostly, but not limited to, the loud rock variety.
A little over six years ago I concluded that I could no longer live in the United States. I didn't feel safe there, and felt that the media, government, and much of the population, including many people I cared about, had been driven into a sort of mass hysteria.
At the time I was living in downtown Washington, D.C., a few blocks from the White House. I opposed the Iraq War, marched against it on the Mall before and after it started, and split my time between working, making music with friends, and getting to know my partner Emily better.
It wasn't easy leaving America. Much of the story can be found at a blog we wrote together at SunburnedCountry.com.
Now we live in Adelaide, which any local will tell you is, "just a big country town."
So first things first: Was it worth it?
When I posted the link above, I looked at some of the things I wrote at the outset of this trip, including dismal projections of the coming American future (many of which, sadly, have come to pass), and the rosy predictions of our future life in Adelaide (much of which is still...ahem...a work in progress).
Some of the positives:
I live a relatively less stressful day-to-day life devoid of the traffic and inescapable upward mobility that was a given in D.C.
People here are a bit more engaging, and a bit more forthright. In the States, it was common to feel isolated in even the most crowded of settings; everyone walking around with blinders on. Here, people are a bit more likely to acknowledge the existence of those they don't know around them.
Fairness, something that I think has fallen by the wayside in the States, is at the center of the Australian identity, and that has helped us and many other migrants find something of a life here.
Significantly less of my taxes go to Iraq, Afghanistan, and China. I feel less guilt for being (an unwilling) part of an international enterprise that I deeply and personally object to.
Instead, I now have access to Medicare, a single-payer healthcare system much like the one deemed unacceptable by the business, medical and political leadership of my former home, despite its general success in the rest of the western world.
Cost of living is a bit lower here, which is nice, especially now that the Aussie dollar is near parity with the American dollar.
Though I suspect a lot of locals would disagree, Adelaide is a well-planned city, with carefully protected parklands surrounding the central business district and calculated growth policies which seem to have mostly preserved its charms.
There are pristine beaches, the local wine regions, and stunning countryside to explore, which we've tried to take advantage of as best we can.
Also, we adopted an superlatively awesome dog.
Some of the negatives:
We have struggled to find stable jobs here. Until recently I was temping, and my partner has done freelance graphics, video, and animation while juggling casual work.
We expected to keep up our relationships with our friends and family stateside, but have found this incredibly difficult due to a variety of factors, including, but not limited to, distance, time difference, the sheer extent of the effort required to be a migrant, and money limitations. We have nieces and nephews who barely know us.
Adelaide is a tough town for outsiders. There are not many degrees of separation here.
We find that for every person who takes us at face value, there is another person who pre-judges us as the epitome of the America we sacrificed to escape, a first impression that is difficult to shake once made.
Indeed, Yanks, as we are commonly known, are often seen here as a bit of a curiosity... omnipresent and generally liked in television and movies, but somewhat unsympathetic in the abstract. There is a fascination with American culture tempered by a wariness of American values.
It's fair to say that many Australians equate the American populace with the aggressive and self-centered American government which, in my humble opinion, escaped its constituents' control some time ago. Admittedly, there is no shortage of anecdotal and other evidence to support the notion that Americans are selfish jerks.
The reality is that there are selfish jerks and lovely, kind people everywhere, and Adelaide is no exception. It is easy to adopt generalised notions about people based on where they're from, but my experience is that complexity reigns, and individuals defy characteristics of national/regional identity more often than not, as true here as anywhere.
Politics:
I still follow American politics while I try to make sense of the Aussie variety, and have learned a lot in the past four and a half years we've lived here in South Australia. I don't yet feel particularly comfortable wading into local politics, but I follow them and the more grounded I feel in local and national issues, the more likely I am to speak up.
American politics are still a big draw for me, as a native Washingtonian, and also because they are a bit more dramatic, the stakes a bit higher.
For instance, I recently told my father that the biggest issue in the latest federal election here was the allocation of mining profits.
By contrast, the recent American election was dominated by a nasty recession with widespread unemployment and arguably the largest expansion of federal power since the mid-twentieth century.
I am well-versed in American politics, and probably will always find them a bit more familiar than Aussie issues and political parties.
However, my values are still the same. I'm a progressive, guitar-strumming, drum-beating, folk/rock-singing, tree-hugging, soapbox-toting shit-kicker who trusts multi-national corporations and their media outlets about as far as I can throw them.
I hope for the best, and plan for the usual. So far it's served me pretty well.
The Present:
These days, things are going smoothly. I have a good job with leave and such, am still making and releasing music in my spare time, and have a fairly domesticated day-to-day existence.
I am no longer a fish out of water so much as an adapted swimmer. My accent is still mostly Washington, but I say, "Howyagoin," "Cheers," and, "No worries," a lot.
It's been a long, strange trip, but we have made it to the other side relatively intact, and any minor issues I might have are far outweighed by the gratitude I feel for the contentment I've found.
To answer my earlier question, yeah, it was worth it.