MinneToCA

koreaa

I meant to write this post in June or so, right after starting my new job at AOSense. 2022 was a busy year for my career and my life, and I wanted to write it down in a post here. Here’s some stuff that happened:

I also started writing some more technical notes-style stuff at work, similar to my 2019 paper posts. I’m satisfying the writing itch that way, I guess.

Why are you leaving?

By the time of my last post (early 2022), I was already set on leaving Quantinuum and Minnesota. I started slowly leaking my plans to various people, and I got the same response from my friends on the West Coast: “about time!” My Midwestern friends (and coworkers, once I told them) asked me a different question: “why are you leaving?”

At zeroth order, the answer is obvious: because it’s California. The West Coasters “get it.” But that’s not really something I can say without projecting stereotypical Californian snobbery and elitism (despite having lived 12 years in CA and 12 years in the midwest…), plus it sort of misses the point. Why was I so eager and even desperate to go back to California?

I ended up responding in a lot of different ways, mostly trying to give the most relatable answer each time. I didn’t like the weather. I wanted to be closer to family. I wanted to be closer to friends. I wanted to eat some good Asian food. I wanted to see mountains. I missed “home,” whatever that means. I never really collected my thoughts until my last week in Minnesota, when I accidentally said what I wanted to say: “I’m tired of being a minority here.”

Alienation

I moved to Minnesota two days after George Floyd died.

I saw the news in the hotel the night before I made the drive up from Champaign, and prepared for racial tension, protests, and curfews in a big city that was still under lockdown. With this on my mind, I felt uneasy as I started living in my new apartment and exploring my new city. I thought this feeling was caused by a mix of COVID, protests, and my anxiety over starting my first big boy job, and expected it to blow over. After all, the Twin Cities were so much bigger and more interesting than the cornfields of Champaign-Urbana, and I had loved it there.

But the more I stayed, the more uneasy I felt. Whether it was talking with people or just walking around in public, something just felt off. I would feel stares, looks, and glances at the grocery, and a conversation would be always just beyond my grasp.

I wouldn’t call it racism, discrimination, or even microaggression. It’s unlike Ohio neighbors slinging “Chinaman” at my family, Illinois barhoppers praising me as a shining example of American greatness, or rural Minnesotans yelling “go back to your country!” Past the intentional and below the conscious was a constant, oppressive feeling of alienation, of not fitting the “norm” of a God-fearing American. Maybe those gazes have been stinging my face all these years, and I only started feeling it once I acknowledged the growing anti-Asian sentiment.

An American dream

It felt stupid to kowtow to and retreat from something that was so insignificant compared to dying (black) or dying (asian). But I was out of grad school, where everything was temporary. I saw people around me getting married, buying houses, and settling down. I envisioned myself five, ten years down the line, and I was scared. Would I still be driving the 100 back home in pitch black darkness, trying to find basic Asian groceries in far off places, and flying back “home” to LA only once or twice a year? Would I have built up or found my own community? Would I only be able to feel a sense of belonging in a limited space? And what I feared most - would I lose a part of myself?

In the mirror, I saw ripples of my parents’ much harder journey, coming from China to a daunting foreign land. I spent my childhood following my parents in their decades-long chase for the American dream, moving around the country as they searched for stability and a place to belong. They gained so much, but along the way, lost parts of their family, their culture and even their language. Somehow it felt like I, the product of their dream, started wandering down that same road, and to what end? I already knew where it led.

So, California.

California

It didn’t need to be California. I knew and considered many other places that could’ve made me happy wrt alienation, but each of those still would’ve come with risk, and I was done compromising. My parents suggested I take small steps to eventually end up in California as they had, but why take small step when big one do trick?

Outside of California, it’s in fashion to dunk on California. Apparently it’s a crime-ridden gridlocked concrete jungle where the rich rent out closets, and the poor sleep on the streets. Conservative media watchers see it as a hellish shithole, but even some of my most liberal friends didn’t see the point of trading low cost of living and minimal traffic for a little more sun. And wouldn’t it be scary to have so many earthquakes and fires?

Now I’ve finally sorted and written out my feelings about the converse (i.e., why not the Midwest?), but to actually say it succinctly the next time I hear that CA slander… maybe instead it’s worth just saying what I told my parents. Now when I’m driving home on the freeway and I see the light of the sunset hit the mountains, I feel so happy.