Reason #1 for moving to Cleveland - Until I was 30, unless I was with my family, I was more than likely busy... but bored.

Jog my father's memory a bit and he'll probably remember hearing "I'm bored" A LOT! Because I was! It was the video game era and that got old. I couldn't drive and that sucked. We went ape shit when we got a Taco Bell and after 2 straight days on the bowl that got lame. I did the normal things kids do and that was the extent of my life experiences... and for me at the time that was good. Until my father took me to New York City. 4 weeks is a long time so I'll save that one.

I lived in an inner-ring suburb of Canton (http://cantonohio.gov/) but I don't ever remember visiting there. Drop me in the middle of downtown a mere 10 mins away from where I grew up and I couldn't make it out without GPS even to this day. Same for Akron. I sorta have Cleveland figured out but that's because I made an effort to. The boundaries of my life were the city boundaries of where I grew up. I know today that this was probably the case in order to keep me safe since these cities have been on the decline in many ways since the 1950's.

Whenever I did go to the big cities though it was always an event... or for traffic court. That's an event right? Anyway, what I meant were sporting events, plays, the circus, ice capades, etc... and all of the excitement that those things brought out of a child. We got to see the big buildings as we drove through to our destination like the ones on TV. There were blinking lights and cotton candy too! What kid could ask for more? I even got to see Jose Canseco take one off the dome for a home run in old municipal stadium. Once we figured out what happened, we laughed our asses off! The whole of the experience... every nerve firing... every chemical reaction to the input of the environment... every emotion triggered from the entertainment... they all made the special moments that I will always remember.

Even though those exciting experiences were forever tatoo'd  on my brain... you always had to go home to reality. In my life when you mixed school and homework with sports, you end up with a few minutes for dinner and then right to bed. I can't say that I had that many complicated thoughts when I was young and sometimes I blame that on the lack of time to think... but that's really me trying to tell myself that I wasn't stupid. My teen years flew by even as I complained daily about the never-ending feeling of school. Today I look back and it almost felt like being pushed from behind while shuffling your feet forward only enough to avoid being pushed again. No thoughts about where you were going or even what you'd do when you got there.

Take this story for instance in Wednesday's Plain Dealer - http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2014/03/construction_begins_in_april_o.html

Until about 4 short years ago, I could have given a shit about this story. Go ahead, move to Crocker Park. That place is awesome! It has super fancy stores and a Cheesecake factory. Oh my God and you can live there! I almost never have to drive ever again.

Now it actually shows up on my radar. For a few reasons but most of all because American Greetings picked a suburb to move to and didn't choose downtown Cleveland? Or another up and coming neighborhood in Cleveland. Or a neighborhood on the cusp of gentrification or turning itself around. When Hallmark moved their HQ they chose to move to Kansas City. The actual city. Not to a mall in a suburb that needs more tax dollars like I need more holes in my head.

So bad sentence and paragraph structure aside, I think about this stuff now when I read it. I wonder what the history of the situation shows us. I look for someone to blame. I wonder how much more the City of Cleveland needs to do to persuade businesses to invest and move into it's boarders. I think about a lot of stuff. The point is that for some reason it took me 30 years of my life to find out what really interested me and to actually focus my energy on doing something about it. And really barring 1 or 2 experiences from my past, I can't think of why?

Check out my other reasons by clicking on the links below:

• Reason #1
• Reason #2
• Reason #3
• Reason #4