Conversation

I genuinely think one of the most harmful things to my quality of life and mental health the last five years has been being forced to live in the suburbs.

It’s the little things - hours lost to traffic and driving that I could spend reading on a train or bus, being unable to just go outside and walk around, not having a cafe, library, or even non-sports bar open after 6 pm), and everything just designed to be as low stimulus and inoffensive as possible. For an ADHD brain, it just drains me of so much life. And I really do rely on having places outside the house to do things like write because of how my brain gets stuck at home and needs fresh stimulus.

It seems like we’re still going to be stuck in this situation for now, since I want to live with my wife (and can’t afford not to), which means being within roughly 30 minutes of her work.

I don’t understand why anyone would actively choose to live in the suburbs and really wish we had other choices available to us.