It has been said that no matter where you go, there you are.
While it is not exactly my place to give advice on such a crucial undertaking as relocating your life and that of your family, I do have some thoughts on things you might want to consider very critically before making such a decision.
You would not be the first to fall under the allure of a seemingly casual lifestyle or the appeal of a Mediterranean climate, both of which have drawn folks from around the world to California for centuries. But all is not as it seems once you have made such a place your home.
Daily traffic jams on eight-lane freeways were enough to get me to abandon that misguided counterfeit paradise decades ago. Any time I had occasion to visit in later years I could see to my absolute horror that the legendary California over-reliance on the personal automobile had only become worse, and the traffic-jam-constant in everyday life apparently had only been mitigated by more upscale and well-accessoried cars in which to sit for hours every day. God help those who cannot afford the payments on such machines, and it only takes one breakdown to create even worse traffic jams going back miles in their wake.
And if some folks get their way on this 'EV' sci-fi fantasy, you can add high-temperature and extremely dangerous electrical fires, in traffic, occurring on a regular basis to that constant.
Not to mention that California is permanently under the thumb of one of the most hyper-liberal and (apparently) chronically stupid regimes on earth, which seems destined only to demand more taxes and fees for every aspect of individual life, in order to fund the regime's apparent addictive determination to try every social-engineering experiment anyone can think of, even as every one of these fails to produce any result at all other than even higher taxes and fees, along with more crime and homelessness, and exponentially rising costs of living just to add insult to injury.
As for myself, I couldn't get out of that nightmare world fast enough, back in the late seventies, and every time I have been back there this has cost me an extreme state of anxiety, as though I were entrapped in a house of horrors disguised as an amusement park where everyone around me was living in pure delusion, and did not feel safe or sane again until that place was behind me again.
Leaving California is still one of the best decisions I ever made, and if the tens of thousands making it every year are any indication, I am not unique in this regard.
You can have the place if you insist, but I wouldn't wish California as a place to live on my worst enemy, and you are far from this to me.
Of course I will wish you well, but I had to warn you, of how inevitable it seems that you will be bitterly disappointed: visiting there is one thing, making a life there quite another.
Perhaps no more prophetic lyric was ever penned than The Eagles:
'...you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.'
I do hope, in all earnest good faith, that you do not allow this to happen to you and yours. When you find out what those words can mean, it may already be too late.
It has been said that no matter where you go, there you are.
While it is not exactly my place to give advice on such a crucial undertaking as relocating your life and that of your family, I do have some thoughts on things you might want to consider very critically before making such a decision.
You would not be the first to fall under the allure of a seemingly casual lifestyle or the appeal of a Mediterranean climate, both of which have drawn folks from around the world to California for centuries. But all is not as it seems once you have made such a place your home.
Daily traffic jams on eight-lane freeways were enough to get me to abandon that misguided counterfeit paradise decades ago. Any time I had occasion to visit in later years I could see to my absolute horror that the legendary California over-reliance on the personal automobile had only become worse, and the traffic-jam-constant in everyday life apparently had only been mitigated by more upscale and well-accessoried cars in which to sit for hours every day. God help those who cannot afford the payments on such machines, and it only takes one breakdown to create even worse traffic jams going back miles in their wake.
And if some folks get their way on this 'EV' sci-fi fantasy, you can add high-temperature and extremely dangerous electrical fires, in traffic, occurring on a regular basis to that constant.
Not to mention that California is permanently under the thumb of one of the most hyper-liberal and (apparently) chronically stupid regimes on earth, which seems destined only to demand more taxes and fees for every aspect of individual life, in order to fund the regime's apparent addictive determination to try every social-engineering experiment anyone can think of, even as every one of these fails to produce any result at all other than even higher taxes and fees, along with more crime and homelessness, and exponentially rising costs of living just to add insult to injury.
As for myself, I couldn't get out of that nightmare world fast enough, back in the late seventies, and every time I have been back there this has cost me an extreme state of anxiety, as though I were entrapped in a house of horrors disguised as an amusement park where everyone around me was living in pure delusion, and did not feel safe or sane again until that place was behind me again.
Leaving California is still one of the best decisions I ever made, and if the tens of thousands making it every year are any indication, I am not unique in this regard.
You can have the place if you insist, but I wouldn't wish California as a place to live on my worst enemy, and you are far from this to me.
Of course I will wish you well, but I had to warn you, of how inevitable it seems that you will be bitterly disappointed: visiting there is one thing, making a life there quite another.
Perhaps no more prophetic lyric was ever penned than The Eagles:
'...you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.'
I do hope, in all earnest good faith, that you do not allow this to happen to you and yours. When you find out what those words can mean, it may already be too late.