City Life

Every time I visit Dallas or Houston or even Tyler, I'm reminded that I could NEVER do city life again. My year and a half of city life was enough to last me a life time. I've never hated living somewhere as much as I hated Houston...Dallas was ok, but Houston was the last straw! I guess College Station is as big city as I can comfortably get. When I drive in big cities all I can think is "oh my gosh, get me out of this...I hate this" and I'm always looking for "easy" back ways to take even if it means adding time. I understand small town life is not for everyone, just like I hope you understand city life is not for everyone. Kilgore is great for me since I don't have to sit in traffic for 2 hours everyday and I can leave to get dinner at 5:30 and make it back home by 5:45. Driving 1 hour (many days more in Houston) just to get the 10 miles to work from my apartment was horrible. The 1 hour (most days more) to get from work to my apartment was ridiculous. Driving 30 minutes to get to the other side of the freeway to the park I ran in was insane. I lived off of I-10 and worked across from the Galleria...literally 10 miles to work...and all that time driving-what the heck?!? I love to see my friends who do city life, but I could never live near them again because big city living is not for me. People always say "everyone knows everyone and everything about everyone else in Kilgore," but I can asure you I don't know everything about all 11,300 other people in Kilgore, and they certainly don't know everything about me! My philosophy is this: I would rather my neighbor be a harmless busybody than a serial killer "blending" with the community-my point: knowing your neighbors isn't so terrible. I'll just visit the big cities when I need a good shopping trip, want to see a good friend, want to see a great musical/play/ballet and live the small town life the other 98% of the time.