Getting ready to leave

Lileks is ready to leave his home, but reluctant:

I have identified with this place for so long it feels like treason to leave, and there’s something dangerous in disengaging long before you actually go. I love my home, I love my job, I love belonging here, and I love this place, but it’s trying my patience. And to be frank, it feels like it’s done with me, too. This is hard to describe. But.[]

In my case, I feel that the motor vehicle-auto insurance-law enforcement complex is after me and my family. We keep getting tickets. Once my daughter was going over the speed limit on a stretch of US 80 tht was deserted--except by a cop. I myself got a speeding ticket on a highway on which if you don't exceed the speed limit they run you over. And my grandson--he received a letter from the Insurance Surcharge Dept, or somewhere, saying that they will hold his various offenses against him going back to 1974. He was born in 1984. Oh yes--there is the time they suspended my license for failure to pay a parking ticket. The motor vehicle establishment in NJ believes that every holder of a driver's license is a felon they haven't caught yet. Unless you are an Arab terrorist. All of them, including the 9/11 guys, spent time in Paterson or Jersey City and enjoyed it to the max.

Meanwhile I see kamikazi motorists cutting in and out of traffic, cutting off others, making illegal u-turns and otherwise behaving like dangers to themselves and all the other drivers.

My auto insurance, for three rust buckets, is equal to one month's income. And don't get me started on property taxes, which they have been promising to fix at least since 1978, when I moved in. They only fix them higher.

But of course you’re running away from yourself when you do something like this, right? Well, no. Wherever you go, there you are. But at least in Arizona, you’re warmer....

It's not warmer in Delaware, but taxes are lower. And automobile insurance could not be higher, because NJ is the highest of the 50 states. Nice to be a standout in one area, isn't it?