Goodbye Rat Race
What’s your living environment like now? Smog, congestion, people and traffic everywhere, or are you watching a mother deer raise her fawn? Are your roadsides cluttered with billboards and irate drivers or bluebonnets? Your surroundings go a long way toward determining your mood and the amount of stress in your life. Austin’s tangible benefits can help you relax a bit more, and a friendly population adds to making Austin a perfect destination.
On of the main reasons people are coming to the Austin area is to enjoy a better standard of living. This is not to say that Austin is perfect and has no growing pains of its own, but when it gets stacked up against wherever they’re coming from, Austin usually wins hands down.
You can get to downtown from most areas in about a half hour or less, and once you get there you can even drive around in modest traffic day or night. That’s the way living around most of our cities used to be.
Austin has an energetic and productive workforce. What is different here is that most people are not exhausted and stressed out because they spent hours each day commuting. In addition to less stress, this translates into more time for family relaxing.
The list of outdoor activities is unending. If you’re into golf, you can usually get tee times without getting up at 4 AM to get on a standby list. Courses are everywhere. We have the available land to do it and the hunger for being able to enjoy it just about all year round. For cyclists, Lance Armstrong lives here and trained in our Hill Country. There is a serious commitment to healthy outdoor living, and Town Lake on the edge of Downtown Austin has 10 miles of hiking and biking trails and fields just on the edge of downtown. You’ll find natural preserves and hiking trails in most communities.
If music soothes your soul, you’re in the right place. There is more live entertainment activity per capita here than anywhere in the world, and we’re not just talking about country music. The South by Southwest Film and Music Conference in mid-March brings 1,400 bands from around the world to Austin together with hundreds of thousands of people. This might be the one exception to the rule of being able to easily get around in our downtown area.
Friendship is the state motto. It may sound cute to some and corny to others, but after living in many places on both coasts for a number of decades, I can say with experience that it’s real here. The people welcome newcomers and extend a genuine warmth and friendship. Texas is probably the only state where the residents have a strong pride in their state, and outsiders become real Texans the day they get their drivers license. You will establish real friendships here, and it will bring sunshine into every day.
If you really want an alternative to living in the rat race, look no further.