Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Thanks for sharing WRC, I found your write-up about your change in perspective interesting.

Western Red Cedar wrote: ↑

Wed May 28, 2025 7:47 pm

The cool thing about Asia is it often feels a bit like a dream while you are there, but it definitely does once you get back.

Interesting, I wonder. Moving to a country where you are richer than at home takes away restrictions. Perhaps that's what makes it feel like a dream? Asia is not a dream for Asians.

I appreciate your reflection of "home". So many people I run into or hear from complain a lot about where they live and how bad this or that is. Until one truly spends time anywhere else, only then can they form a proper perspective and grounds for the criticisms if it is warranted. This isn't the case for you but something I am able to apply to my particular surroundings based on your journal and travel as well as others like 2B1S.

Cheers

Side note on clouds... how true on diversity. Living in the Canadian Prairies there is nothing like watching a massive thunderhead form while now being in the PNW clouds seem to have much less character but I appreciate them all the same.

Ditto again on the clouds. On the way to work years back I remember the clouds looked like mountains and the distance and I was dying to move out west then. Maybe Cumulus clouds. At that job, one of the part timers who came back from retirement in the summers had a cloud chart at his desk. Similar to this one IIRC: https://science.larc.nasa.gov/edu/cloud-chart/

I’m trying to appreciate Home more these days, letting go of that grass is greener on the other coast yearning. So I appreciate that discussion as well.

Stasher wrote: ↑

Thu May 29, 2025 10:07 am

I appreciate your reflection of "home". So many people I run into or hear from complain a lot about where they live and how bad this or that is. Until one truly spends time anywhere else, only then can they form a proper perspective and grounds for the criticisms if it is warranted.

I've talked about this elsewhere on the forum, but I was pretty critical about a lot of things in the US as a teenager and young adult. In fact, I still am. The experience of living abroad for a couple years and traveling through Asia and Central America really made me appreciate things about the US that I had taken for granted. Most places have positive and negative cultural features. It is definitely easy to highlight the negative, but that time abroad helped me appreciate the natural beauty in the western US, an abundance of opportunities to earn income and improve myself, top-notch infrastructure, clean drinking water, amazing libraries and educational institutions, reliable public transit, and the creative spirit seen in so many great bands, writers, filmmakers and other artists.