Hello, Maine

I am frequently asked what led me to Maine. The answer is a story of Gen-X disillusionment, working class struggles, and financial desperation, with an exceedingly rare blissful ending.

Prior to living in Maine, I lived in Lubbock, Texas, or, as I like to call it, the ass-end of hell. The whole town is segregated - seriously, all of the people of color are on one side of the highway, and all of the white people are on the other side of the highway. The only school in town that teaches evolution is the Catholic school. The public schools teach “intelligent design” and are also prone to referring to the American Civil War as the War of Northern Aggression. Oh, and everyone in town looks the other way, pretending not to see each other, when they buy liquor. Don’t even get me started on the Boom Boom Cabaret, just outside of the city, a classy establishment that a large percentage of the white male population frequents and then lies to their upstanding Protestant wives about it.

Don’t get me wrong - I have nothing against strip clubs. Everybody’s got to make a living, and you only have to look at the covers of magazines in Hannaford to understand that sex sells. I was sad when the topless coffee shop in Augusta burned down. Who doesn’t like the female form, right? What I personally don’t like is hypocrisy.

I was not born in Lubbock. I was born at a naval hospital in Kingsville, Texas, and was raised for most of my life in Houston. I ended up in Lubbock by choice, which meant I actively chose to suffer for four years. My reason? Grad school. I had listened to all of the allegedly well-meaning college advisors and majored in a subject I loved: history. And when I didn’t know what to do with that degree, I went to grad school and got my MA in military history. You see where this is going. After that first round of grad school, I ignored my inner voice, the one that told me to quit the academic path and either be a dog groomer or a manager at the Walmart where I worked, and instead began a PhD program at Texas Tech University.

I was quickly miserable. There is a degree of backbiting egoism in academia that I had not previously encountered in my bachelor’s and master’s programs at my little commuter school, Sam Houston State University. It became abundantly clear to me that a future as a professor was not for me. I am simply not a part of that particular brand of gentrification. Despite a high GPA, I failed my first attempt at comprehensive exams, meaning I didn’t make it to being “ABD” - all but dissertation. Passing comprehensive exams is similar to passing the bar exam in law school - you can try as many times as you like, until you pass. But I realized that I was not going to do any better on subsequent attempts, and took it as a final sign that I did not belong in that particular world. I have never regretted that decision.

So I wrote, professionally, for a time. I set up several contracts with websites containing news and travel articles, and it provided enough of an income to survive. I searched desperately for a regular job, and I had no snobbery about it - I applied to everywhere from Starbucks to Home Depot and beyond. I applied to be a 911 dispatcher and even began researching how to become a police officer, because the police department in Lubbock is always hiring (and always firing, too). The bottom had dropped out of the economy, and again and again, I was rejected.

What I was really desperate for, beyond the minimum “must make enough to eat and have shelter” was to get out of Lubbock, and I was fortunate enough to have the fates push me in that direction. While I was writing an article about the Peace Corps, I came across the website for AmeriCorps. I had never heard of AmeriCorps before and was quickly sucked in to the possibilities. Finally, something that appealed to my desire to work with my hands thatcoincided with my own values, as well.

The night that I discovered AmeriCorps, I didn’t go to sleep. I spent all night looking up options, uploading resumes, requesting transcripts and contacting my references. As I sat in front of my aging Mactop, dreaming of the possibilities, I thought about what I wanted, if I were able to wherever I could possibly want. I narrowed it down to two priorities: cold and sparsely populated. Third, in the back of my mind,I wanted to live near water, but I assumed that nowhere near water would be sparsely populated.

Then I found Maine. A program in Belfast, The Game Loft, was looking for an AmeriCorps VISTA. The rest, as they say, is history. I put in my application in the middle of the night on a Sunday. Monday I was called for an initial interview. I was interviewed by the program directors Wednesday. Friday I had a plane ticket to go to Maine to find a place to live.

Ten years later, I’m still here. And I don’t ever want to leave.