Where am I? Does it matter?

I was transferred by my company at the beginning of 2008 and had to sell my house and move from the shoreline in western CT to upstate NY.... Needless to say, it took forever to "sell" my house. I put the word sell in quotation marks because I actually ended up having to give the buyers $5000 to take my house (and all the equity I had in it) from me. So strictly speaking, I bought a buyer of my house.

Add that to the apartment I had to rent in Syracuse for the 8 months while I was trying to sell my house; the weekly commute back and forth from Syracuse during the summer of 08 when, as you will recall, the price of gas spiked to $4.30 a gallon. It was like the Gods got together and agreed I should not have any money - just debt. Consider their mission accomplished.

But I digress.

So here I am in Syracuse NY. It's a small city that has it's charms to recommend it - but it is not necessarily where I would like to be. It's flat - no mountains and no seashore. It is a city unto itself. An island between farms and lakes. If you want to go to a different city, you have to drive nearly 2 hours to get to another decent size town.

I don't hate it or anything, but given a choice, I would not necessarily pick Syracuse out of the many metropolises this country has to offer.

That said - does it matter any more where one lives?

We have the internet now. I have been able to gather many of my friends and acquaintances from my past scattered all over the world and put them together on facebook. I can read their blogs and find out what they are twittering about. This is huge people!!

I can shop online and buy whatever I want from Japan, China, France, Turkey, you name it. And I can view, read and learn about whatever I want to - almost as good as going to libraries and museums, and certainly much cheaper.

I'm not saying the internet has absolved us from the need to travel and see things firsthand, or visit our friends. But boy, it definitely brings the world and friends a lot closer. I honestly don't think I could have stayed where I am for this long without the internet. The question is, how much longer can I last here???