When I was young, I hated Maryland with a passion. Mind you, I’ve never lived anywhere else but in Maryland and I didn’t travel much as a child but man, did I hate this state. I thought was boring, there was no adventure, no nothing. To me, Maryland equaled BLAH. I never could understand why would people choose to live here. Sure, Maryland is a funny looking state if you like your state to look like a gun, there’s a strange mix of people and land here and you could find things to do here if you really tried but me, I wanted to live anywhere else. California sounded fascinating. New Orleans sounded wonderful. Hawaii was exotic. I wanted out and I wanted out now. As soon as I turned 18, I figured, I was leaving and never coming back.

Of course things didn’t work out like that; I turned 18 and moved to Baltimore for college as I got accepted at my first choice school and the rest is history.

Flash forward to today: I went out for an early dinner after work with Stephanie today. I haven’t seen her in awhile and now that I’m working in Howard County, I figure it would be cool to catch up with her. And yes, it was quite awesome to hang out with her – makes me wish I kept in better touch over the past 3 years.

We got on the topic of mutual friends traveling and her applying for grad school overseas and we got on the topic of living in Maryland. We’ve both been raised here but as we both discussed today, after it’s all said and done, I think we’re lifers and I’m ok with that. Sure, I would like to live somewhere else for a little bit just to see what it is like…but this is home.

It’s still not quite so exciting here. At UMBC, it’s not a party school at all but rather you need to create your own fun – it sums up this state nicely. Maryland has a lot to offer if you know where to look*. You want rural; we got it. Want to see a beach? Sure not too far away. Like the city? Hit up Baltimore. Suburban life is your thing…yup. Have a desire to crab all day at the bay. Yup, we got a huge bay for that. Like mountains, got those too! We also have pretty decent weather for the most part. Sure we get random blizzards that dump obscene amounts of snow but that’s rare. We rarely get tornadoes (despite our tornado warnings this weekend that did not turn out to be anything), hurricanes (last major one I remember coming through is Isabel back in 2003), or earthquakes (though there was one apparently in Arbutus a couple of years ago but no one really felt anything). We do get humidity and lots of it but our temperatures are not extreme. I’ll take that over the dry heat and 112 degrees (though I will be the first to admit I’ve never experienced 112 degrees – I don’t imagine it to be something I’d enjoy).

Plus I finally found someone who understands my little quirk and agrees! Big states freak me out a bit. I can get from here to Virginia in less than 30 minutes if traffic cooperates, I can be in West Virginia in an hour and 15 minutes, it takes me an hour precisely to get to Pennsylvania going on 83, and an hour and a half to Delaware. 4 hours gets me to Atlantic City, NJ. I can be in NYC also in little over 4 hours. However it can take a ridiculously long amount of time of driving to still be in one state in states like California, Texas, Arizona, etc – thus big states make me feel a bit trapped!

So when it’s all said and done, there is definitely something to be said for boring!

*I feel like whoever’s in charge of Maryland’s tourism should be using me in their commercials! I think I would make for an awesome commercial – much better than their commercials they play on the radio lately. Speaking of which, why would you play a visit Maryland commercial on the radio…in Maryland? I don’t get it *shrugs*