How did you end up where you are?

I was born in a US Army hospital in Germany and lived in that country for almost two years. Then my folks returned to their (semi-)native southern California where I lived until I was nine. Then we moved to St. Louis, Missouri and I lived there until I was 19 at which point I 'moved out' and roomed with some friends in Chicagoland for a couple years. Then I went back to college in Columbia, MO and lived there until I was 29. We moved to New Jersey following jobs and friends, spent five years there, then moved to an exurb of the Twin cities, MN. Five years ago we bought 20 acres of woods and moved north 150 miles. Some of those outlined blocks included several 'local' moves. I attended eight schools and four colleges. Moving around was the norm, though I hope I'm done with that -- if I move again, I expect it will be as a refugee.

At every move after childhood, there are lots of reasons to do so. Following friends and family, chasing jobs, following climate, looking for affordable land, lots of other stuff. In general, once I was making decisions, I've tried to move to places with cooler summers without getting too far from our folks.

We wanted acreage, we couldn't afford a 'hobby farm', we wanted to live somewhere with pleasant summers, we wanted to live within half an hour of a small city, we were attracted by low-service low-tax counties, we wanted to live close to Lake Superior, we preferred MN to WI but not strongly and that's how we ended up here.

Also, what about propensity to move? I've moved a lot, but not a *lot*. When I moved to NJ, my immediate manager was in the process of moving twenty miles over from the county he was born in and in which he had always resided to a spot in an adjacent county. He was experiencing some psychic trauma over this move that took him out of his space. I accept that he felt what he felt, but it was entirely alien to me.

Christopher Weeks wrote: psychic trauma over this move that took him out of his space. I accept that he felt what he felt, but it was entirely alien to me.

agree entirely.
I was born to a fresh-out-of-army young man and his new wife who augmented his income as a truck driver by fixing up and flipping houses. I think I lived in 15 places by the time I was 18, and just kept moving. I've been here in this house for 11 years now (!) and it's the longest I've ever lived anywhere, and let's just say my feet are itchy..... my siblings, who were born 10 years after me when my parents had more money, lived in the same town for most of their childhoods and have barely ever left the state. It's hard to understand, but a great case of how the environment can shape the child.

As for how I got here? how much space do we have? I'll sum it up with a quote from Julia Child, "Be intrepid." I'm willing to try anything, and not afraid to fail. It's taken me around the world and things are still evolving. Life is good.

In 2009, I was not happy with the politics of the development where we were living.

I thought moving to the area where our daughter was living, so I check out houses in the area.

There was just something wrong with all of them.

I found a place that out in the country though close enough that I could get to a store that sold groceries.  Dear hubby was always complaining how much he hated the place.

The place we live now was in an area near a place that our daughter had a dear lease.

The remoteness has its drawback though we both love it here and am glad I picked this place.

I'd moved to Portugal in 2005 with my husband and young son. We'd bought land in Wales but failed to get permission to build on it, so we chose somewhere we could afford to buy land complete with a house we could renovate. All sorts of adventures happened along the way, but I lost my husband in 2018. Then the universe conspired (way too long to explain it all here...) and I ended up with a new partner, who was an old school-friend of mine. More craziness happened and he left Wales to be with me in Portugal. Only it soon became apparent that my place was always going to be 'my' place, the one I'd worked so hard on with my husband, and it was always going to feel like Austin didn't really belong there. So one Sunday evening I said "Let's move, let's get somewhere that's ours!"

So we hit the local online agents to see what was available.

About half an hour later I'd found somewhere I liked. Far enough away to be a fresh start but close enough to the area I'd grown to love. A couple of acres to play with, including a bit of mountain and forest, plenty of water from a water mine, terraces up the mountain, fruit trees, olive trees, a lovely old stone shed, and a house that needed a good bit of work but was a price we could just about afford. Perfect!

And then just as I was about to tell Austin about it, he piped up that he'd found one that would be just right for us - right price, enough land for me to have a nice garden, house was about the right size but needed work, and there was a railway running right past so he could watch the trains!

Sigh. Oh well. Just when I'd found the one I wanted. So we swapped links. And it was the same place! We'd each seen the house and the things that mattered to us. I hadn't even noticed the railway...

I emailed the agent and we arranged a viewing a couple of days later, put in an offer and paid the deposit. Then more adventures started happening as we raced to get the floors replaced so we could move in before the lockdown in 2020. We ended up making it by the skin of our teeth and spending lockdown in isolation in 'our' place, not able to go and meet neighbours, not able to buy stuff for renovations, and living on bare boards with only absolute essentials as we began to renovate the place around us and set up the garden.

In my childhood/teenage years we moved with my parents and younger brother every three year-ish, our dad was a career climber (and successful at that).
He had always told me one should live abroad for about a year in order to "enrich ones' life" and so I did.
I moved from Finland to study in Estonia (half a year). Then more studies (university) London,UK for three years. Then I met my future husband on a weekend trip to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and after graduation, I moved to live with him. I guess I was taking this "enriching my life" thing to heart

Fast forward twenty years (!) and we had a vacation home in France and a teenage son. It was also the time of lockdowns and we got to our vacation home for the Christmas vacation... and we stayed. The father of my son was by then retired, our son switched to home schooling and I could deep-dive into my permaculture aspirations.
But. Our vacation home was desperately in need of renovation, and so we started The Great Renovation in October '21, mainly with hired workmen.
Exactly one year later the hired workmen had done their basic layout and we needed to finish.

A volunteer helper came to lend us a hand with the renovation. He had a dog, I had a dog. So we went for early morning walks with our dogs.
And we talked. And I noticed that we had the same values and views on life. The same day rhythm (I was living 'apart together' with my husband, meeting him at meals and in bed). With this volunteer, we also shared the same aspirations for lifestyle.
Fast forward two and a half years and I've started all over with 'my volunteer'  .
New garders to start in an old orchard, renovating again, this time the starting point is more basic (very!), but we're happy saving an old farmhouse from falling apart and creating our home. My son lives with us, in his own Tiny House (was a camper) until he flies out of the nest and starts University this summer - September. I'm in good speaking terms with my ex-husband - who got to keep everything for himself since I was the one leaving.
It's wild crazy adventurous to turn ones' life upside down like this, but I feel I really didn't have a choice - it was meant to be.
So that's how I ended up where I am now!

Apparently I'm the only person here who has lived in the same area their whole life.  I spent most of my life, until 4 years ago, in NE Portland OR.  Then I got married and my husband and I lived in SE for year, which he hated since he didn't grow up in such a large city, he moved from a small one to marry me, and I got us a place at the bottom of town because I knew he'd hate NE where I was used to, but even Sellwood neighbourhood wasn't quite enough for him.

So we moved one county over and have lived in 2 different small cities here, and we like it here, its a good compromise between my needs for transit and my husband's dislike of "the big city".  But now we have to move to NE again to combine house with my father, as he's needing a bit of stability that we can provide, in a few different ways.  Plus we'll be able to save money now, as our rent will be below market rate, and someday we can get back out of the "big city" and back to the burbs and buy a house of our own hopefully.  

Neither of us have any desire to start over somewhere far away, we're just not built that way, we like familiarity and having family close by.  

My story is not as adventurous as everyone else.

I grew up in a story and a half building on the 'bad' side of town. I had an abandoned mill, an abandoned factory, a fuel oil company, a bodyshop, and a train track all within sight of my front porch. I went off to college in my state's capital as well as went on different trips but I always came back to where I grew up. In fact, I managed to take over ownership of of my childhood home and have been working on it piece by piece as I have time. It has been fun. The abandoned factory is gone, replaced with a volunteer fire station. Ongoing work locally has been getting closer and closer to cleaning up and repurposing the closed down mill. Young families have started moving into the homes near me and folks are all over town walking and bicycling. It is a privilege to be able to see the transformation of this piece of the village in my lifetime.

I was born in a tiny,  economically depressed town in Missouri, about 5 hours from here. Then, to find work, my dad moved us to the suburbs of Chicago, when I was 3. We left behind my grandma, uncle, and my German Shepard, Major, all of whom I was deeply attached to, so I grew up always wanting out of that area, to go back home. My folks split, both remarried, and eventually, my dad & stepmom moved to the southern part of the Michigan mitten, to pursue his dream of a family farm. A few months later, I finally managed to convince my mom to let me follow him. Both sides of my family were mostly always on the edge of town, on bigger land parcels, with room to grow things, have a few critters, always keep gardens, and both did lots of canning. The farm, however, was 29acres, 5 miles from tiny-town: weirdly like the 29.1acres we're on now, 6 miles from another little town! There were always (except that first year in Illinois) critters - at least a dog, and maybe an 'outside cat'. Mom had eventually let my sister and me each have a dog, a bunny, and my sister got a pony, and I got a small horse. Mom sold the pony to my dad, when he moved to MI, but sold my horse to someone else, at the same time.

In MI, as a teen, I found my stride on the farm. We had dogs, cats, a WONDERFUL, sweet-tempered Jersey cow, that we milked by hand, 6 horses, the pony, over 150 rabbits, no idea how many chickens, ducks, & geese, plus every year, a few steer, and eventually, a pet pig. Arnold, the disco pig, so named for his love of and 'dancing' to disco, was a freebee, because he was a tiny, 2lb runt my stepmom & brother rescued from a farmer, who was just about to drown him. My brother raised him in his bedroom (because it was February, and we had no pig-oriented infrastructure, much less for a tiny, solitary runt), until my dad went to wake my brother (6ft, probably about 175lbs, at the time), and all he'd do was grunt. Dad shook him - grunt. Dad, out of patience, ripped the covers back to discover John was not in the bed - but the much grown Arnold was! John spent that weekend finishing up the pig enclosure, and Arnold was outta there!

Sadly, I ended up moving back to my mom's, in Illinois after a few years, because there were few employment opportunities, and I was DRIVEN. I wanted my own farm! But, I still hated being in IL. Lots of bad memories, and, too close to city life. I was stuck there until my early 30s, when husband #2, my daughters, and I 'escaped' again, to Kentucky. My son, 14 yrs old at the time, decided to stay with his dad, because he wanted to play football with his school friends. My heart broke, to leave him behind, but I just couldn't stay anymore. I kept hoping he'd change his mind. A decade in Kentucky saw my older daughter tire of rural life, and move back to her dad's, with her brother and a second divorce for me.

A couple years after the divorce, I met John, online. Guess where he lived, and couldn't move away from (at least not without losing his shared custody of his kids). Yup. A suburb right by the ones I grew up in, in Illinois. So, we dated online for a year, then he and my older two kids came down, and moved me back to Illinois, and in with my (by then, adult) son! Another year went by (after 2 failed marriages, I was VERY gun-shy!), before we got married. We spent the first 9yrs of our marriage, there, before circumstances with his kids changed, and we were ready to follow the mutual dream of our own piece of land, with some chickens, and a couple of dairy goats. He wanted Colorado. I just wanted out of Illinois. So, we started looking and discovered there were some details about buying land in CO that were deal breakers, for us - primarily, water & mineral rights issues, and how the cost of living had skyrocketed, there.

Plan B: we built a list of deal makers & breakers; everything from climate, cost of living, and laws to proximity to both a large body of water and mountain/ big hills & caves. Low and behold, we landed smack in the middle of my birth state. My *only* regrets about this farm is the soil is crappy (you'd THINK someone wanting desperately to grow things would have paid attention to that, before buying!), and the terrain has quickly become ridiculously difficult for both of us to maneuver (because injuries & aging happen much faster than you expect them to!), to take care of the burgeoning livestock we've accumulated over the last 5 1/2 years.

I said after this last move, I would never willingly move, again. We've set down some pretty solid roots here, and I highly doubt I'll ever move away from this area, again, but I've come to the sad realization that I may not have a choice abount moving to a different/smaller farm. This house is too big, the outbuildings are too far away from it, the terrain is much too rough, between the several buildings, and it's already becoming more than I can manage, especially with John's deteriorating health. I've moved 24 times, in my life, and it looks like eventually, I'll have to move at least one more time, before I'm done.

Timothy Norton wrote:My story is not as adventurous as everyone else.
... I always came back to where I grew up. In fact, I managed to take over ownership of of my childhood home and have been working on it piece by piece as I have time. It has been fun. The abandoned factory is gone, replaced with a volunteer fire station. Ongoing work locally has been getting closer and closer to cleaning up and repurposing the closed down mill. Young families have started moving into the homes near me and folks are all over town walking and bicycling. It is a privilege to be able to see the transformation of this piece of the village in my lifetime.

I used to be envious of the people who were born and raised in one place; in my envious vision they had friends they had met at kindergarten, they had deep roots into the environment, they belonged.  
Later, I came to realize we all have our own treasures, found along our life paths

i've not yet "ended up" somewhere!
currently i am living between northern california and upstate new york, spending part of the year in each. and thinking maybe i would rather be in either vermont, the berkshires, or oregon, and travelling around those areas too.

a big influence on the beginning of my restless roaming is not being able to live in my hometown area. growing up in an area of outrageously expensive housing - the cape cod area (my dad), and the southern shore of massachusetts (where my overwhelmingly huge maternal family still lives), where that used to be more reasonable as you headed inland (and quaint and farmy and lots of rural)- now its almost as bad as the cape area. areas i remember being cornfields, cranberries and pigs (!) or even wooded, are now overpriced McMansions. and the cape, it was always a bit pricey now its just unreal...most everyone who grows up there has to leave because theres so little affordable housing, and especially for someone making a go of being a full time professional artist. but yeah it was always expensive now its ridiculously expensive.
and now its like a movie of itself! a perfect movie of meticulous lawns and huge huge houses. there used to be more artsy people, there and on the islands, like when i was young i had some extended family who lived in nantucket, so i used to go out there and sock away money working at almost anything, but most of my family who lived there made a boatload of money selling their not even very fancy houses there many years ago. that is even more ridiculous, but i spent a few winters back there in the day, hardly no one lives there in the winter.

so yeah i've lived in a lot of places, first i settled in vermont when i was young, then washington state, then down in northern california, on the coast and then inland a bit to the klamath knot, siskiyou county way way out in the mountains.
actually in the years between washington and california i lived on the west coast loop....up the coast on the 101, maybe cut over to the 5 at some point (eugene!) all the way to seattle or even british columbia (british california i like to call it) hang out in vansterdam (vancouver) then back down to either humboldt, mendo, or out to siskiyou.
again and again, round on the loop, that was like 8 years of van dwelling with communes and short term stays in different land shares and brief rentals in between traveling.

until some years ago when my father passed i got sucked back to the cape for a while and remembered how i could never really live there to begin with. so i was aiming and looking for a place in the berkshires, which is i think where i would like to be...but my arrow went a bit west and i ended up getting a place in upstate new york.I had to find a new place to live because my living situation in the cape was becoming very toxic, so i took what i could get and afford, but i...well am not that attached to being there. making the best of the "for now", fixing up the ruin which is the first place i have managed to buy outright, and had enough to store most of my stuff in the "for now" but still putting feelers out and looking to other places.

i too have envy of people who can just root down deep in their place, i do long for that, even in my most unrooted days of traveling around. especially in those days, especially the difficult days of that, which there were quite a few, more than i remember of it...
it had some perks,of course...and i am glad i did that -- i am by nature a sort of homebody though, deeply introverted, hole up somewhere for months on end hardly talking to anyone - and yet that happened and i did it and i am glad i did. in those days anything could happen, and it did . i could drive in my little home on wheels and end up meeting some new best friends and next thing you know i was like staying somewhere for a while, or got sucked into a communal situation, big music festivals, making money with selling art, a little one woman traveling circus =)
but i was glad when that ended too, and i could hole up in siskiyoufor some years and do some big gardens, but the hills kept catching on fire! then i decided to go back east.

so yeah i dont know where i will end up. !
and i think as much as may think how green that grass is of much more grounded peeps, i think maybe my inner restlessness would make me throw it over or something, maybe it wouldnt have been as good as i imagine. idk, i have a lot of contrary motivations.
less so now maybe that i am starting to go grey. maybe i have finally settled down somewhat. i have actually only ever wanted to root down good, but circumstances and living situations ending, and communities that are unstable, and bad land mate drama, and not having a lot of money, my path has been a bumpy one.
for now, shallow roots in root new york. / northern california =)

My birth father died before I turned 5, Mom remarried to a workaholic that ended up being the only dad I remember. My stepdad was successful, he and my mother ran a small gravel truck business. The business required moving away from the small town I will always think of as home.
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New town, smaller, two-faced people. Went back to home town for community college, it had changed. I was no longer one of the guys.
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Started driving truck for my stepdad, off and on when I was 18. This was in Iowa, a bad year had us going to Arizona for winter work. It ended up saving the company, and I spent a lot of time out there. My parents bought a 2nd house in Arizona, I would eventually marry the girl next door.
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We ended up going to Iowa, and my stepdad, who had always told me what to do, started telling my wife what to do too.
The stress was too much for her, she ended up on anxiety meds.
We spent a couple years working in Des Moines, but were always a paycheck away from being evicted. I ended up buying a truck from my dad and we started doing the snowbird thing, Iowa road work for 8 months, Arizona for 4 months.
My wife's health got worse, then better. Then after 4 years my dad died, he was the business. My Mom tried to keep it going, but I wasn't him, and a secretary that wanted the business was running it into the ground behind our backs.
Mom sold the trucks, and my wife and I moved to Arizona. At first in an RV, then a house.
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I was hauling for some pretty shady truck brokers, and somewhere along the way I had a bit of a breakdown. We ended up losing everything, pickup, house, all our stuff.
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Moved in with my wife's parents, her younger sister and 2 nieces. It was bad. My mother-in-law took my wife on a plane trip to West Virginia for a 10 day trip. My wife stayed, "If you want to see your 4 year old son, we're in WV."
My personal vehicle blew up, went to collect my vacation money to pay for an engine, the IRS had garnished my wages.
A friend sold me a crappy Pontiac Gran Prix for $750 and I joined my wife and son in West Virginia.
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No decent jobs in West Virginia, ended up driving truck over the road. Gone for 4 to 5 weeks at a time, 5 days home. Missed out on a bunch of my son's life. 3 years ago I got hurt on the job, was off for 16 months healing up. Living on workman's compensation sucks, but we got by.
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14 months ago I found a better version of driving over the road, regional job. I get around 10 days off per month, wife's happy, son's happy, and I am happy.
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I still occasionally buy a lottery ticket though.

I grew up in SoCal. My dad had been born there before 1900, so the family roots were deep. I got engaged at 16, married at 18 and moved to Europe with a GI hubby. Dad got sick, I went home. On our 1st wedding anniversary, hubby1 was living with a former high school friend and engaged to a 16yo. That was too crowded for me.

I got engaged a lot, but didn't remarry for a while. In the meantime, I moved from L.A. to San Bernardino and lived in the college dorms, then apartments, then I rented a 2 bedroom house. There was a married couple and single guy living in it, everyone was supposed to move out. The couple did, the guy didn't for 3 months. By the time he left, I was hooked on him (we'll have been married 45 years this summer).

He moved to the desert, I moved to the beach -- for work. I followed him to the desert. We got married. Our first house was WWII military housing in a military town, city lot, in the high desert. That job ended. He got work with a big computer company. He moved to GA temporarily, then FL. I sold the CA house and moved to FL. We bought a new house, city lot, lake in the back yard. The company transferred him to NH. Sold the FL house, rented a duplex. After looking 6 months, I found a log home on an acre of land, near a dead ski resort. We bought it. We're still here.

We are looking for a retirement home, New England won't work, too expensive. We can't stay where we are. No family. Nearest supermarket is 9 miles away. We can get groceries delivered, at $25 a shot.

He telecommutes and we don't know how far away we can be from the job.

We're trying to make this place as self-sufficient as we can, without killing the resale value. I've been looking in IL for our retirement home. (We have family there.) Found one last year which would have been perfect: house, garage/workshop, land, pond, chicken coop, veggie garden. The people who bought the house bought just the house.... not the accompanying acreage.

We always had, at least, a garden. My early years were in a suburb of a large city. After that my family moved to a 16 acre plot where we added a goat, chickens, and ducks. After college and marriage my wife and I discover a copy of Mother Earth News.  We moved to northern Minnesota on 10 acres.  Things did not go well there largely due to a collection of bazaar neighbors .. at least one ended up in prison…and another dead.  Anyway, it was a good place to move away from.  My wife and I regrouped, put a serious amount of money aside, and, after careful research, purchased 11 acres in southern Illinois. We have been at our current site for over 25 years.