Sept 16, 2026–Most people are living at the place where they stopped moving.
It’s true for me. I arrived in the Texas Hill Country back around 1980. And I just never left.
There was no grand scheme, no analysis of cost of living, year-round average temperatures, or access to medical facilities. Nope. I just arrived, played music, and next thing I knew, 40 years had passed and I had grandkids.
(Well, there might have been a red-haired girl involved…)
I look at my own family, nine kids growing up in a small Midwest town. If you plotted where each eventually settled, you would get a nice distribution. The closest one lives literally across the road from where he was born. Another is in the back yard of our childhood home. Two more are in the city 25 miles away. Two others live 40-60 miles away in opposite directions. One is in a neighboring state, and finally a brother who moved to Arizona. That one might have the closest thing to a reason for his location. When we visited him recently, he swore he would never endure another winter. Zero chance of that in the land of giant saguaros.
I’ve joked that if I had been one of the pioneers setting out on the Oregon Trail, I would have given up on the second day, which barely got me to Lawrence, Kansas. Despite promises of planting crops in the rich soils of the Willamette Valley, there was no way I was going to cross deserts and mountain ranges while evading marauders and catching cholera. We all played that video game.
I am very impressed by retirees who decide to relocate to their perfect “over 55” mecca. They undertake analysis worthy of a moon mission, comparing home prices, income and property taxes, and mapping fastest routes to medical facilities. Is it Kroger or HEB territory? What is the mean average rainfall? Will we face hurricanes, tornadoes, or floods?
I am in awe of them.
During the time we live in one place, we grow comfortable with our environment. After years of putting down roots, we learn the shortcuts to avoid out-of-town traffic. We have a family doctor. We cheer on the home team. We have a favorite gas station and bank, sometimes a favorite teller. We get upset when the grocery store relocates the JELL-O brand pudding cups.
To throw all that out the window and start completely over would spike my cortisol. Going on adventures is for younger men. I used to be completely comfortable driving into a new town, not knowing where I was going to sleep that night, then getting up and doing it again.
Sadly, our adventurous spirit dissipates. I read where the secret to keeping our brains plastic is to slightly rearrange our environment every day. Little things like driving a different route to the store, hanging a picture on a different wall, or brushing your teeth with your off hand.
But it carries risk. If I place the rocking chair in a different corner of the room, I’ll stub my toe on it while stumbling to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
Besides, over-analyzing geographic locations does not always pay off. I once moved to a town where I could buy a 2-story house with full basement on a corner lot for $5,000. That’s right… five thousand dollars. My monthly mortgage was $100. Five years later, I sold it… for $5000. And I was glad to get it.
Then I moved to a town where an 850-square-foot 2-bedroom 1-bath home cost $35,000, an exorbitant sum for a poor musician in the 1980s. It soon was worth 10 times that. Proving that sometimes the wrong move is the right move.
So enjoy your move. I ain’t going anywhere.