Retreat to Tahoe Didn’t Fill the Bill

She looked at me with flaring eyes, and in that instant I knew it was inevitable. For six months I had been seriously considering leaving the Los Angeles/Orange County area. I debated the pros and cons. I talked to a Realtor. I did calculations and recalculations, and I even developed a strategy. Somehow, though, I couldn’t cross the line between consideration and action.

On this day, I was in Westwood. Traffic was heavy. I had been trying to make a left turn when a window of opportunity presented itself, and I cut in front of another car. As I began to execute the turn, I locked eyes with the other driver. Her eyes were as cold as steel and they cut through me like a knife. I knew if she could have she would have killed me on the spot. In her eyes I could see all the frustrations associated with living in L.A. They told me what I had been feeling about living here. I made the decision. Snap! I would call the Realtor tonight.

What was it I saw in that chance moment? I had been feeling for a long time that connecting, I mean really connecting, with people on a day-to-day, normal-activity basis was nearly impossible. The stress and strains of a hectic, overcrowded environment seemed to make us all retreat into our own world of frustration. We have our friends and sometimes we permit ourselves to connect, to open up just a little. Typically, however, we seem to focus on our own world, staying in our own microcosm, not looking to the right, not looking to the left, nor behind, only straight ahead to where we are headed. A shopping experience meets with cold stares, efforts to beat each other in line, or other behavior which clearly echoes the cry, “I don’t care about you.”

I moved to Irvine 13 years ago when it was one of the most wonderful places to live. Gradually, without my knowing it, it had changed. It wasn’t the same. Only in the previous six months did I begin to sense this. Then there was also the problem of people constantly flowing into Orange County and the impossible, untenable highway overcrowding. Going to the post office, once a 15-minute project, was now an hour’s ordeal. Freeway trips to see clients in Los Angeles became a full-scale travel experience: Commute five hours and work for seven hours. Every four years I gave up one person-year to the freeways. Was this the way I wanted to live, turning gray in my car, fighting exhaustion and listening to radio talk shows I had no interest in? Even a car phone didn’t help the feeling of sheer waste--waste of my precious time, my life.

Several times in the past I had vacationed on the North Shore of Lake Tahoe. I had felt the peace and sensed the congeniality. As I thought about moving, Tahoe came to mind. There I felt I could find all that I was longing for, all that I thought I needed.

The beauty that is Lake Tahoe brought serenity and peace just to look at it. People in the grocery store actually smiled and exchanged pleasantries. Traffic, even during what they called rush hour, didn’t seem to be a problem. Occasionally tourist traffic slowed things down, but not very often and generally not in Incline Village where I thought I might settle.

Then, of course, there was a difference in the house I could buy. A lovely property with a lake view could be bought for $300,000. Could I ever hope for that in Orange County? Life in Tahoe seemed real: real people, doing real things, working together to create a wonderful place to live. Ask anyone in Lake Tahoe where they had come from and if they like it and typically you heard, “The Los Angeles area. I love it and I’d never move back.”

It’s now three months after my move. Did I find what I was seeking? No, I think not. What I was looking for was not outside. It had to come from inside. I had gotten so sucked into the stresses and frustrations, I lost sight of the positives of living in Orange County. The ever-unfolding business and personal opportunities. The chance to live on the leading edge, to be constantly moving forward and experiencing new things, new people. To be accepted as a dynamic, business-oriented, tough-minded woman and to fit in without having to temper who I was for a slow-moving community.

I had lost sight of the real issue, the issue that was my own attitude toward--and about--where I lived. I got so caught up in the small percentage of negatives, I didn’t see the positives. Perhaps that happens to all of us, those of us who forget to smile at each other in the grocery store, or who fail to stop so the other guy can cross the parking lot. The negatives loom large and we focus on them, overlooking the good and withholding good from each other. Get caught up in the frustrations that are L.A. and you behave in ways you didn’t think possible for yourself. Then one day you find yourself living in a town of 7,000 people wondering what on earth a cosmopolitan gal like you is doing there.

Will I sell my gorgeous house, overlooking one of the most beautiful lakes in the world? Will I trade the quiet for the city life? Make me a reasonable offer and you can have my house. Orange County, here I come! If you see a lady smiling in the check-out line, it’s probably me.