This Place is a Prison
This place is a prison
…
And you may case the grounds from the cascades to puget sound,
But you are not permitted to leave
“This Place is a Prison” by the Postal Service
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It always strikes me how beautiful the Pacific Northwest is. It’s like a slap in the face. It’s layered again and again on top of itself, from the pine trees to the sky to the lighting to Cascades to the water. All of it a fractal painting that’s truly breathtaking.
It’s also one of the most challenging places to live. It seems like every single part of living here is out to get you. There isn’t a microtransaction that’s been overlooked and not a single soul who isn’t out to take their pound of flesh from you if you let them. It drives paranoia into every interaction. New people aren’t met with “Hi there! How are you?” (with the you having at least 3 syllables), but instead we greet strangers with a “What (the fuck) do you want from me?” if we even acknowledge them at all.
You can’t see this if you haven’t been anywhere else. It’s the water you swim in. I know it’s hard to believe, but you can live in a place where people are actually nice just because, and where parking doesn’t require you to download an app that will track you. You can live in a place where you don’t need a six figure income to get by, where the cost of your rent isn’t fifty percent of your income, and where you don’t have to turn every hobby you have into a side hustle.
But you can’t escape it if you want to keep it all. If you want the opportunity to make a million dollars on a start up, if you want cuisine from everywhere in the world, if you want a thousand beer choices, if you want a deep and wide dating pool, if you want to meet like minded, highly educated, politically engaged people. If you need the best schools for your kids, a house that others will envy, or a location that people won’t ask “where is that?”
If you want to keep it all, this place is a prison. Worse still, the prison is locked from the inside.
All you have to do is give up. All you have to do is decide that you’ve been lied to and get off the ladder. You’ll lose some income, you’ll leave the beauty behind, you’ll loose the skin you had in the game.
But you’ll be free. You’ll be free to buy the Farm, to knit and not sell on Etsy, to cook and not start a ghost kitchen. Your conversations won’t revolve around money nor around cutting edge ideas. They’ll become everyday conversations for everyday people.
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You can never get free.
This place is a prison, and time on the inside has changed you.
These new people? These people aren’t your friends. They don’t know how to hustle.
They’ve never had to learn to code.
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The median home cost in Seattle is $850,000.
But all it really costs is your heart.
