Ramblings On Suburbia, the "Real", and Wanderlust

“The suburbs dream of violence. Asleep in their drowsy villas, sheltered by benevolent shopping malls, they wait patiently for the nightmares that will wake them into a more passionate world.”

from Kingdom Come by J.G. Ballard

Have you ever read about a crisis, and felt the pull of it?

It sounds a bit insane, but it's an experience I have fairly often. Every year when the hurricane forecasts roll out across Florida, when wildfires spark and grow wild in California, when a protest in a major city is antagonized into a riot. I've followed all of these things from behind a computer screen, and felt somewhat of a pull. The area I currently live in, Brevard County, FL, is almost supernaturally lucky with hurricanes. The last hurricanes to hit us of any real signifigance were long before my family moved here- the twin storms Frances and Jeanne, in 2004, of which there are still a few scars today, like a plinth of fenced off and cracked concrete near my favorite city park that used to be a riverside bar and restaurant. There have been close calls since, sure, particularly 2016's Hurricane Matthew, which before it's last minute curve was forecast to hit us dead on


"Melbourne, Daytona Beach, all the way up to Jacksonville. This moves 20 miles to the west and you and everyone you know are dead. All of you. Because you can't survive it. It's not possible."

That blunt, no-nonsense reporting drove my parents to evacuate last minute after initially deciding to ride out the storm, and we piled into the family minivan heading inland to Orlando, where we were nearly stranded after our gas gauge started to dip and we ran into a wall of tapped out gas stations and fully booked hotels. Ultimately, we returned home, and Brevard County as a whole came off relatively clean. Apocalypse panned out to 1 injury, and 174 million dollars. Brevard's hurricane luck has evolved into a dark joke- suggestions of sarcastic conspiracies that NASA manipulates the weather to protect Cape Canaveral, or that they chose this area due to some innate hurricane-shelter properties. Whatever the case, we've remained lucky as the record-breaking hurricanes seem to mostly concern themselves with the Gulf Coast and Panhandle. Hurricane season has mostly become something observed via nervous texts from out-of-state relatives, and coin flip speculation on whether outer band rain will be enough to knock down the flimsy power grid and give us a day off work. 

I want to say I understand that these horrors are indeed horrors, and that I am entirely thankful to have avoided them thus far. But I cannot deny how often I've sat on the edge of my seat, pouring over quarter-daily NOAA hurricane hunter reports I pretend to understand, refreshing a Cailfornia fire evacuations map, flipping through my TikTok feed to catch shaky iPhone footage of flooded residential neighborhoods- it's something I am, undeniably, somewhat obsessed with. I think back to a mutual aid flood cleanup I once participated in- standing in a gutted house on the edge of Orlando, drenched with sweat and a claw hammer in one hand next to an unstable pile of sodden drywall chunks, and I think how that single day, was one of the "realest" experiences I've ever had.

My first job out of high school was an internship I didn't really earn- a bad teacher and my school's PR desires got me into a machining position at a defense-aerospace firm of some repute. I hated that job, hated it. Every morning I clocked in before the sun went up, walking through the shiny glass entrance building, and then across the industrial campus, full of squat metal and block buildings, decorated with pipes and tanks that hissed in the still morning air. I wasn't a good machinist, and I didn't seem to be turning into one, despite the company's best efforts. I won't fault the management- my manager was an extremely down to Earth, kind man who was never unreasonable. And I think often about a story of his own he relayed to me, of shuttling across a cavernous automotive manufacturing plant on a contract job, and the deep disquiet he felt towards it being part of what led him out of his native Kentucky.

That job was my automotive plant; a gray, boxy building where I kept fucking up and falling behind on increasingly "simple" jobs. I developed the classic coping mechanisms- increasing numbers of increasingly long bathroom breaks, and sometimes twice daily vending machine visits that ruined my already poor dental hygiene and diet. Much like my manager's Kentucky automotive plant, I also loathed what the aerospace machine shop represented- my best shot. With middling grades and no college degree, an in-demand skilled trade like machining was probably my best shot- certainly for the area in which I lived, where outside aerospace your options quickly narrowed to the everpresent fallback of critical-but-forever-underpaid service work.

One day, in a conversation who's context I forget and I now regard as possibly my lowest point, I told my dad rather frankly-

The worst part is it's fine, yknow? I could do this for 10, 20, 30 years.

and then I'd throw myself off a bridge.

When people ask me why I want to move to Chicago, I often struggle to give an answer that feels satisfying. I have reasons, of course- robust public transit, relative affordability, a wider job market, museums, culture, better for my hobbies, all that jazz. I'm not throwing away a reliable job for nothing. At it's core, I have to admit a major reason is that on the Space Coast, I feel incredibly stuck. Some of this is what every young adult experiences- the slow malaise that builds from being within the same four walls you've known since childhood, sitting at a desk that's now a bit too small, surrounded by shreds of past hobbies, failed early attempts at building your own personality. My borderline hoarding aspects probably didn't help with that last part. A major reason why I set a moveout time at all, made a "final decision" on when and where I was moving was to force me to confront my overflowing closets and drawers and make a change, lest I generate another 6 months, a year, 5 years of excuses and secondary tasks I 'should really get done first'.

Trying to stitch together an ending to this post, now in Chicago, on my own, intermittently homesick and hoping for a job, I don't know if I even feel less stuck. I can already feel the complacency seeping back in- I've gotten "familiar" with a few intersections, a few stores, the routes that will lead me back "home". Just stay in, at the computer, etc etc. Sometimes it still feels like a vacation, that tomorrow I'll pack everything back in my car and point back towards home, and by Monday I'll be back at my job, pressing a foot pedal and flipping through terrible youtube video essays. I am trying to be better- explore the neighborhoods, get involved with some volunteer groups locally. I am certainly "doing more" than I was before. But my dad unfortunately was right- you take yourself wherever you go, and making a 'big change' in life is never as magically transformative as you hope it will be.

I could go around in circles for a few more paragraphs, but I'll write those when I feel like I should, and when I have more to say. If you've read this far, thanks.

Further Reading to maybe understand how I got like this

This article was updated on June 27, 2025