- How long have you lived here? If you were not born here, indicate where you came from and why.
I’m not from Muncie. I came here in 2003. I moved here when my partner took a job here. I’ve lived in a lot of places, mostly along the East Coast, usually in large cities. I’m not a small-town or small-city person.
- Are you happy with where you live? Do you feel like you belong?
I’m not really happy about where I live. I like my house and immediate neighborhood fine. I like that I can walk to a nice library, a nice museum, and a nice gym, and a bit of woods from my house. My life is easy here. I don’t have the big city hassles that my siblings face. There are other upsides to living here as well. Cost of living is lower than other places. Traffic isn’t an issue. And, most days I’m too busy with my job and family and personal pursuits to lament that we don’t have this or that amenity in the community. Most days it really doesn’t matter that I am or am not in Muncie. I wouldn’t choose to stay here if I had a better option, though, but really, at 15 years in, I’m so entrenched in my job and the lives of my children and spouse are bound up with this place so I feel stuck here. Most days it doesn’t feel like I’m stuck, but having to think about it brings those feelings up.
I don’t feel like I belong here. None of my close friends are Muncie natives. But that said, I don’t really feel like I belong anywhere in the U.S. I can’t go back to previous places I’ve lived and feel at home either. I feel rootless despite having lived longer here than in anywhere else in my life. It’s an odd feeling. I feel like a jerk for saying these things about a place I’ve lived for so long. I could work harder to fit in and belong and I could work harder to make Muncie the kind of place I’d want to live, but some of things about Muncie that are negatives for me can’t be fixed. I miss the ocean where I grew up. I miss being in a very large city like New York, where I lived as a young adult. I miss mountains where I’ve never lived. I’ve made some small contributions to the cultural life of the city but I haven’t really tried very hard to change it. I’ve turned inward rather than outward. Part of the isolation I feel comes from the fact that my values (political and social) are out of touch with many people in this red state, but I could say that about living in the United States as a whole, too.
- Do you expect to stay here for long? What are or will be some of the considerations in deciding how long you stay here?
My remaining here is entirely bound up with my job and my spouse’s job. While neither of us expects to lose our jobs, our jobs aren’t very portable and we are unlikely to move at this stage in our lives until we retire. If one of us were to lose his/her job we’d have to leave. Other than friends there’s nothing keeping us here, and all of our closest friends have tried to leave. We’ve tried to leave and had a job offer that would have allowed that, but when we considered that offer it didn’t stack up well against what we have here, so here we stay. It’s a condition endemic to my line of work – you take a job where there is one.
- How would you describe Muncie to someone who has never been here? What are its most distinctive characteristics?
I would describe Muncie as a decent place but down on its luck. A decent but not exciting place. A place past its prime. A place on the losing side of globalization and economic shifts. A place with decent people but challenged aesthetically. It’s not a place I find beautiful. I’ve had to work over the years to adjust to living here, to accept that this is where I will spend the bulk of my adult life.
- Do you think the ways other people think about Muncie are the same ways you think about it? How do you your thoughts and feelings about Muncie differ from its public image (from media or word-of-mouth around the state and beyond)?
- What are your feelings about Muncie’s future? What are your hopes for Muncie? How do you expect Muncie will fare in the years ahead? What changes do you expect?
I’m embarrassed to some extent about how I feel about this place and I almost didn’t submit this essay. I hope other people don’t feel as I do about it. I’ve met a few other non-natives and they’ve stayed here by choice, so clearly there’s something wrong with me that I feel this way. It’s probably insulting to people who love it and I feel sorry for that. I recognize this has more to do with me than Muncie. I can’t say I’m particularly hopeful about Muncie’s future. The draining population and loss of industry makes me feel like Muncie’s best days (which I never saw) are behind it. I’ve made the choice, rightly or wrongly, to accept being here as the price I pay to do the things I love. I should be more grateful to Muncie for that but I don’t think of Muncie as being responsible for the opportunities I’ve had here.