SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA JOB MARKET: WORK AND FAMILY : Are Things Really Finer in Carolina? : Relocation: Well, yes and no. The big hurdle seems to be exploding some of the myths, both geographic and personal.

I left my native Southern California 10 years ago, seeking a saner home for my family and a geographic cure for being a chronic workaholic. So far, I’ve accomplished only one of my goals.

It was not an easy decision to leave, just as this will not be an easy story to write.

After a job interview trip in February, 1982, to Charlotte, N.C., my wife and I thought we were ready to make the move. For several years, we had talked about finding a better place to raise our three daughters.

Most of our earlier fantasies were focused on Oregon, then a fashionable destination for fed-up Californians. But North Carolina seemed just as green and free of congestion. And Charlotte had a job opportunity that seemed to offer many of the challenges I was seeking.

But dreaming of leaving was easier than doing it. Nancy and I liked our home and neighborhood in Long Beach. We often said if we could just extract Long Beach from the madness that surrounded it, we’d be content. We had good friends. Our three daughters, then aged 12, 11 and 6, were settled happily in school.

My extended family--my parents, a special grandmother, the cousins I grew up with--lived an easy freeway drive away in Newport Beach. And I had a good job at the newspaper where I’d always wanted to work, the Los Angeles Times.

We spent three days making endless, worthless lists of “pluses and minuses.” Then the editor of the Charlotte Observer called for my decision. I stammered for awhile, and finally said no. My parents and my kids cheered. But Nancy and I couldn’t sleep that night. Instead of boldly pursuing our dream, we had retreated. So, 24 hours later, I called the editor in Charlotte and told him I’d changed my mind. By that time, everyone on both coasts was questioning my judgment.

Now, a decade later, is a good time to do some more questioning: Was the decision to leave California a good one?; Has life after California met my expectations?; Did the move improve the quality of my life by helping me build a better balance between work and family interests?

Life in Charlotte has not been the Norman Rockwell painting of my dreams. I was naive to believe we could escape Southern California’s pressures, materialism, crime--even its natural disasters.

I also fooled myself with the illusion that you can improve your life by moving to a slightly slower-paced environment. But I’d simply moved my one-dimensional, workaholic lifestyle to a new address.

Despite all the myths and my missed opportunities, I’m still convinced that moving from California to Carolina was the right decision for us. Nancy and I both like Charlotte and have no plans to leave. Our three now nearly grown daughters seem likely to make their homes here too.

A little background might help explain why we left California and why I haven’t yet taken full advantage of the move.

I grew up in Orange County when it had orange groves, when you could see Catalina almost every day from our hilltop home in Fullerton, and when you could take a leisurely 45-minute drive to the beach on two-lane roads. The county’s population was about 800,000 in 1962 when I went away to college in Missouri. It was 2 million when I finally returned in 1978.

During our first 12 years of marriage, Nancy and I had lived in 10 different cities--a price we paid for one of my few hobbies: job hunting.

Once I finally “worked my way up” to The Times, Nancy and I were ready to settle down and raise our family in the place I remembered so fondly. But by that time my roots had been paved over. Our disillusionment grew with each new freeway delay and smog alert.

We stayed four years, mainly because I was so absorbed in my job that I rarely took time to notice whether we were happy.

Occasionally, I would pause to try to capture a piece of my daughters’ fleeting childhoods, like the time I coached Christy’s and Karen’s soccer team for a season. I treasured those times, but invariably I went back to work shortly after the game was over.

Eventually, I began to blame California for my problems. Night after night on the San Diego Freeway--rushing to get home before the kids were in bed--I began to develop a new theory: What if we moved away from the pressures of California’s fast lane?

Charlotte, it seemed, offered a wonderful opportunity to change my commuting and living patterns. The first thing I noticed in Charlotte was that drivers actually smiled and motioned for me to pull out in front of them. And we could afford a much larger house, even though I’d accepted a job paying less money.

Although the adjustment was difficult for our two oldest daughters, I believe today they are better off starting their lives as young adults in Charlotte than they would have been in Long Beach.

Soon, Kim, 16, will be in college and I’ll be relatively content that we gave our children a better place to grow up. But I’ll still be faced with an unresolved question and challenge: What will it take for me to change so that I, too, can take advantage of life after California?

I’m running out of excuses. For the first seven years here, I blamed the newspaper business for robbing me of time to develop other parts of my life. I worked even longer hours at the Charlotte Observer than I had in Los Angeles, despite nightly phone calls from Kim, asking, “When are you coming home for dinner, Daddy?”

When she turned 13, she stopped calling.

That’s about the time I decided to switch careers. Now I write speeches for First Union Corp., a Charlotte-based bank. I was ready for a change after 20 years of daily newspaper deadlines, which always occurred around dinner time. I thought maybe banking would be different.

It shouldn’t have surprised me that “bankers’ hours” would also turn out to be a myth. Now I usually come home for dinner, then write speeches into the night on our home computer. I’m rarely interrupted because Christy and Karen are no longer living at home, Kim is occupied with her friends and Nancy is at night school studying for her new career in the legal field. But is that progress?

Actually, I believe I am slowly changing my priorities for the better. The first step was recognizing that where I live--and what I do for a living--have little to do with whether I can lead a more balanced life. I finally recognize that I have to confront the personality traits--perfectionism and a need for control, to name a few--that have prompted me to spend so much of my life at work and so little at home.

The second step was asking for the support of a group of 17 new friends at First Union. The company recognizes that unbalanced lives lead to unhappy and ultimately unproductive employees. Training courses like the one I’m attending with 17 others encourage employees to heed personal as well as corporate needs. But the daily pressures and workloads don’t decrease, so it’s still up to workaholics like me to change our own habits.

It’s too late for me to reclaim all the lost opportunities of the last 10 years. But I’ve been blessed with new chances. Amazingly, Nancy hasn’t given up on me after 25 years. Yet I know I risk losing even her love, patience and good humor if I don’t devote more time to our relationship. Our daughters soon will be raising their own families, hopefully nearby. Until I seize those opportunities as a husband, father and grandfather, my move from California will not be complete.