Last week Tracey Halvorsen released, in my opinion, a complain piece about what she thinks the current state of Baltimore is. I’m not going to rehash my opinions on the piece, you can read that here. I’m just going to offer a few closing remarks and then move on. There have already been enough responses to this piece that I don’t think I need to spend another 800 words bad mouthing the piece. If you want to read a few responses that have been shared with me, check out the two links below.
Whose Heart is Baltimore Breaking, Really?
Baltimore City, Stop Your Bitching
Look, bottom line, if you don’t like something either do something about it or remove yourself from the situation. Ms. Halvorsen chose to do neither and became a hero to some and a clown to me and others. I received a comment form a reader over the weekend that said that these types of conversations are needed for change to happen. My response was that conversations do need to happen, but that this wasn’t a conversation piece. This was someone taking to the internet to complain about life; a life that is pretty damn good in my opinion. I moved to Baltimore with no intention of staying beyond a couple of years. In those first couple of years I rode the bus to work, had my car broken into and saw the a barbershop below my apartment broken into. You know what, those things sucked a little bit. But I didn’t focus on the few negatives that popped up from time to time. Instead I focused on the many things that kept me happy. A cheaper than most city, two amazing sports arenas within walking distance, more bars that I care to remember walking into, restaurants that are fantastic, close proximity to other fun cities, an airport that flies me home for cheap, sports and social clubs to keep me connected to other young professionals on the weekend, and numerous other things that keep me thinking I’d like to stick around for a while.
If we ran every time something happened that we didn’t like, we’d never stop running and we’d probably never be happy. I’m happy.
P.S. Last show at Ms. Halvorsen is that incredibly stupid front picture on her blog post. Good thing you can google image a bad neighborhood. Here are a few that look a little better.
