6. Access to Healthy Food
Over the past few years, we’ve been lucky to be part
of a CSA in Maryland. With a bit of driving, we can pick up locally grown food
once a week for six months out of the year. That is certainly good news. The
bad news is that a lot of the foods grown during that time period…well, it’s
hit or miss about what we like. This area does a lot of squash. With the
exception of zucchini and maybe an occasional spaghetti squash I can go through
the rest of my life without eating squash. There’s also a lot of potatoes
(which aren’t the best for me) and corn (which comes in at a rate that we can’t
possibly keep up with—6-12 ears per week for three months or more!). Looking at
what is grown locally in where we are living in Florida, we will have easy
access to locally grown bananas, blueberries, broccoli, Brussels sprouts,
cabbage, cantaloupes, carrots, cauliflower, celery, coconuts, corn, cucumbers,
grapes, green beans, lettuce, limes, mushrooms, onions, oranges, peanuts, peas,
potatoes, raspberries, strawberries, tomatoes, and watermelon (and more!) in
various seasons year-round. There will always be fresh fruits and vegetables in
season, and we’ll have access to farms to get them.
Aside from the farms themselves, we’ll have access to
two farmer’s markets that I know of in in our immediate area and several local
butchers and fishmongers and even a local organic honey company and a local tea
company using bamboo leaf tea blends (who knew?). There’s a big focus on local,
sustainable, organic foods at all of these. Travel to the actual farms
themselves will be comparable with driving to farms here, but the farmer’s markets
are much closer. I haven’t checked to see if a CSA is available because while
we are in an apartment, a CSA is a big challenge to keep up with. As late as
last night, there was an announcement about an “artisan hall” being constructed
nearby that will house stalls with homemade/homegrown products (bread, cheese, teas,
fruits and vegetables, etc.). The area is very much focused on access to
healthy foods.
But even with all the great local stuff to cook,
sometimes we just want someone to wait on us. With the high tourist demand,
there’s a lot more choices of restaurants in the area that aren’t just cookie
cutter chain restaurants. (Although truth told, there is one chain restaurant
we’re very happy to have down there – Sweet Tomatoes is a personal favorite of
ours!) And yes, there’s still plenty of indulgences to splurge on. I may not
have picked our new apartment because there’s a French bakery within walking
distance, but that certainly doesn’t hurt!
7. Better Socialization Options
The DC metro area is great to find people to socialize
with if you are child-free and you are okay with driving long distances in
traffic (or taking Metro) to meet up with folks. Unfortunately, if you are part
of the child-free scene and suddenly have a kid, it becomes awkward to maintain
friendships with those people. Likewise, if you’re over the idea of spending as
much time in your car as you do sitting down for meals, it becomes very
difficult to maintain in-person friendships.
For the “with kid” set, the DC metro area is also
fairly good about providing “mommy dates” for letting kids run around and have
a blast while the moms try to pretend to like each other or are being
entertained by a place that they wouldn’t go but for the fact that they’ve got
this kid date going on. If you are a family with mom + dad + kid, a lot of the groups
are geared towards one pairing or the other -- so mom + kid is okay, and dad +
kid is okay especially if you are a single parent (otherwise it is a bit weird
that a dad is taking the kid to one of these meetups), but mom + dad + kid is
unusual. But if you want to find opportunities for socialization that aren’t
wholly kid-centric among these folks, it becomes more difficult. There’s not as
much focus on doing family things as a family that the whole family will enjoy,
especially in the winter months. That is something that is much more prevalent
in Florida.
My husband and I have very different views from the
majority of people we meet up here in terms of how to live life, spiritual-religious
views of the universe, and so on. Someone recently shared an article with me
about the DC scene being much more focused on “what you do” (especially in
terms of job/career) than who you are. There is a lot of clawing to get to the
top, and we’re much more laid back than that. It is more healthy to surround us
with lower-stress people…and much less frustrating for the people around us not
to have major envy cases about our lack of stress in life because of our choice
to have a low-stress life or our socio-economic status.
Because the idea of driving a half hour in Florida is
a loooong drive, lots of social activities happen in one’s own neighborhood. I’m
certainly looking forward to Food Truck Fridays, but also meeting up with local
run-walk family groups on Saturday morning to burn off those calories! Up here,
finding similar events would either require a trip on the Metro or driving an
hour or more.
8. Overall Quality of Life
This one is an intangible item, but it certainly comes
into play for the move. The place where we’re looking to build is working
towards being a very forward-thinking type of community in terms of advances in
urban planning. Perhaps the seed of this was started with the original vision
for EPCOT and what later happened with Celebration, but projects like Destiny
and Horizon West are very forward in terms of urban planning and community
growing. In many ways, it is like getting into Columbia, MD 2.0 on the ground floor.
Being in a community where there is a focus on healthy living and a high quality
of life is something that we can’t find (or would be able to afford if it did
exist) up here.
And outside of our personal community, there are additional
benefits. Little things like being able to eat dinner on our lanai or wander
around World Showcase in the evening if we are bored or watch fireworks from
our porch…those are intangibles that you can’t put a price on. Also being able
to have the start of a new life with a clean slate – that’s something you can’t
put a price tag on. It also has allowed us to really dive right in with our
change to a pragmatic minimalist lifestyle. It is amazing how much stuff you
can clear out of the house when you are preparing for a move!
9. Better Home and Career Options
For professional careers, the DC area has three types
of jobs: 1. Federal worker (or contractor working in support of the feds), 2.
private company (or non-profit) working in conjunction with the feds, 3.
company that is modeling itself on the mindset of working in the capital city.
The focus is on doing “whatever it takes” to get the job done, long hours
(often without adequate compensation), being “on the job” even when you aren’t
on the clock (as evidenced by people addicted to their work smartphones even
when they aren’t working!), and the emphasis that you must be driven to try and
claw your way higher on the professional ladder. While some of this exists in
businesses everywhere, the culture of DC is extremely aggressive about how it
is implemented. If you are not cutthroat in attempting to get to the top, you
often can end up in a dead-end position with no room for development.
The Orlando metro area is silently making strides
towards becoming, in the words of some analysts, the next Silicon Valley. Even
if it never goes that crazy, there is a tech renaissance in the area. That’s
something my husband can benefit from. And since the downtown Orlando area is
so cramped, most of the tech businesses are in the outskirts, which makes for
easier commutes.
There’s also the home issue. This house has been
marvelous for us. It has provided us a wonderful place to build a family. That
being said, the house doesn’t fit well for our family at present. The house is
basically two houses slapped on top of each other. Because of the layout, we
don’t use the basement level at all (aside from the accumulation of….stuff).
That means we’re paying utilities for half a house that we never use. In
addition, the upper level of the house, where we live, is really too small for
our needs. There’s a lot of adjustments we’d want to make to the house, but
spending the money on it would price the house out of the neighborhood.
However, if we took the proceeds from the house sale and tried to buy something
to better suit our needs (in a better school area), we couldn’t afford it.
Moving down to build a house that exactly meets our needs in an area that is
better for us (at a price we can actually afford!) just makes sense.
10. Disney, Cruises, Beaches, and other Florida things
Yeah, we couldn’t get around a top ten list without
mentioning these.
Disney is a huge draw. With annual passes, there’s so
much we can do that doesn’t cost us anything additional. The first weekend we
get down there, I’m hoping that we’ll get to go see the Flower and Garden
festival free-flight hummingbird garden and then catch Herman’s Hermits in
concert. Maybe we’ll let Lily play in one of the splash pads on the way out.
I’m thinking a celebratory Dole Whip with rum. Something tells me our next road
trip will involve coming up with a bucket list for our first year…
In addition to that, if we want to do Sea World,
LegoLand, or Universal Studios, they are all nearby. That also doesn’t include
all of the state and national parks, museums, and other attractions nearby.
Although they aren’t free like the Smithsonian museums up here, it also doesn’t
take an hour on Metro to get to all of them.
Here in Maryland, we can leave our house and in about
3 hours (unless bridge traffic is bad), we can see the “glorious” beaches of
Ocean City. In Florida, we can be from our house to Sanibel Island in that
length of time. If we want something closer, we can be in Cocoa Beach in an
hour. If we want much closer, we can be at Typhoon Lagoon in 15 minutes. ;)
If we want to go on a cruise, we have a lot better
selection leaving out of Port Canaveral or out of Tampa (or even Fort
Lauderdale or Miami) than leaving from Baltimore. If we want to do a short
3-day cruise, we have that option without having to pay for transportation down
to Florida.
We love doing both Marathon Weekend with runDisney in
January as well as Reunion with WDW Today in December, but paying to travel
down for both of them back to back is exceptionally cost-prohibitive. Right
there we can attend those two events but save around $2,000 in travel expenses.
It is much better than trying to choose one or the other and then having
“travel envy” watching everyone posting how much fun they’re having.
And in addition to that, Florida just has some really
cool things you can’t do elsewhere. In DC, you can visit the Air and Space
museum. In Florida, you can just go out and watch a rocket actually get
launched. There’s a state park that does pancakes on a griddle at your table
(think teppan-style pancakes!). Airboat rides. Going to see mermaids in the
wild at Weeki Wachee. Picnics on the lawn with the carillon playing at Bok
Tower. Feeding gators at Gatorland. Slumming it at Old Town. The huge (22 mile
long) hiking/biking West Orange Trail. Picking oranges fresh from the groves.
And did I mention Florida has a fascination with castles everywhere made of
everything? And bacon festivals. And the Great American Pie Festival.
Because we’re living where we like to vacation, we can
take the time and money that we’d normally spend on vacation to Florida and
vacation elsewhere—to spend more than just a weekend here or there with family
and see other things in this country and around the world.
So that’s it… an insight into why we are moving and
why we are moving there. It isn’t for everyone, but for us, no other idea makes
sense.
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