Manifest Destiny?

Why did I create this blog site, and more importantly, why did I use such an antiquated term for my migration to such an alien area?

To explain such, you have to identify the original meaning of such a description, when domestic immigrants first started making the push to the other shore of the United States, to write such words as "X location or Bust!" on the leather-stretched canopies of their wagons, to homestead in places not originally settled in an attempt to make a passable living at... living.

I decided on this name to equate the fact that I am in a somewhat similar predicament in regards to my status, and my lack of progression in any movement in promotion (vertical, lateral, or otherwise) in regards to jobs and pay. The jobs that I am at show little promise of improving my quality of life, and the odd-job that has had the potential to go on to a full-fledged career is also usually the one I am forced out of not of my own volition... No, not volition; I always had a choice to continue working at such places, but at the cost of my own health and sanity.

While I may have held the same part-time job with shrinking benefits and pay due to the non-increasing amount I earn comes nowhere near the level of the cost-of-living increase, I believe it is an accurate assumption that my quality of life in which I am currently at will go nowhere but down, progressing worse over the number of years I remain here in this town.

This fact has been proven by a selection of my peers, both those that have remained in this city I call home (hereafter referred to as the City), and those of whom that have escaped its steely clutches and have gone to have, if not very successful, content lives.

That being said, it has come time to sow my proverbial oats in greener pastures. While I cannot completely say that I loathe and detest the area I currently reside in (after all, even the worst things have redeeming qualities), there are certain biases of the cultural, economic… even religious sort that keep this said City from developing into a bustling metropolis—a glimmering gem in an otherwise isolated landscape.

While I make no attempt to relate myself to the pioneers of the early to mid-19^th century and again in the early 20^th century in stating that the circumstances are exactly alike, there is some parity in regards to this matter. Many of the 2008 and later graduates, of which I am a part of, have come to the realization that many of them cannot find the jobs that were readily available when they first entered college, especially if they went to an isolated college where their preferred career is nowhere near where they wished to originally settle. This, in turn, is causing the newer generation to be more reckless in regards to what chances they are willing to take.

While I am a rather level-headed fellow (or at least I would like to believe that is the case), what I am doing in regards to the rest of my siblings is considered brash, even in my two years of planning for it. It has only gotten to the point last year that I convinced my family that I was adamant about my plans to move over a thousand miles away, and they were supportive of my choice this current year.

Mostly.

The truth is it doesn't behoove me to stay around a city that doesn't evolve with the times. Technologically, the area I am in is probably a good twenty to thirty years behind in regards to overall innovative technology coming out of places such as Seattle. Economically, yet another multi-million dollar data center that would have opened up over a hundred jobs pulled out after realizing that they were not welcome by the homebody community and it's city council. I believe this marks the fifth data center rumored to open in the area in about three years.

And while I would like to cast the City I live at in a positive light when it comes to ethical, moral and religious issues and services, it would be a fair assessment that while the City and the surrounding area is not quite living in the stone-age, it is probably on-par with the years leading up to the 1964 civil rights act or earlier. I know that would probably hit a chord with some of the residents here, but I believe it would be sad if they do not acknowledge the fact that they are predominantly white, have a strong anti-progressive mindset, and have a dominant Judeo-Christian backing that is reflected in our senators and congressmen.

The thing is, this demographic represents the majority of the City, and the state the City resides in, and ignores the younger generations and youth whom have looked past what should be such obvious resolutions to the moral, ethical, and political dilemmas of a begotten age. An age where nuclear holocausts, the Red Scare, and gender conformity were the biggest issues that have seemed to transcended the times and followed and plagued us into the present.

An age that doesn't acknowledge basic facts because they overvalue their own beliefs; an age that believes that oil reserves won't run out, there is no such thing as global warming, the current unemployed are just being lazy, as well as there not actually being an unemployment problem, and that there is nothing more powerful, save God himself, than the almighty dollar.

The City has these beliefs in spades. Sadly, the people in power here are the blue-blooded aristocrats that America was ironically trying to separate from when we first declared our independence from Britain in the 1770s.

Though I did deter from my main point of this post, I felt this reasoning was best explained to establish the level of repression that is currently being exhibited here in the City. Unless one is a native of the City with the financial backing to boot or is rather stalwart in their determination to remain here, there is nothing in the City. The only thing that holds me here are my family, of which they are the fortunate ones in finding comfort in the areas surrounding the City.

That being said, even though I was born here, I am foreign in beliefs, morals, ethics, and existence, and as such have not had been given the opportunity to prove myself. The opportunity to prove myself is not of lack of trying over the ten years I have lived in the city, as well as the 25-plus years that I have been in the state that the city resides in to find a quality of life that any motivated person should be able to find, but many, including me, are not able to find in the City and the surrounding areas.

I and many of my peers will tell you that we are not looking for the Holy Grail of jobs. Many of us are simply looking to break the poverty level—possibly even make the median income for our location, but are unable to due to the demographics of cheap labor, repressive employers, blocked employment creation, corruption, and many of the same problems that have plagued us around the birth of America, the mid 1800s, and again at the turn of the Great Depression.

That being realized, this is the story of my modern Manifest Destiny.

Seattle or Bust!