OT: Homesick

[Coronita]

[quote=Thibault]Great post scaredy, even though I have never smoked and I despise Le Monde.

When I first came here, my plan was never to stay in the US forever. I just got stuck in a situation I couldn’t get out of.
The first few years in San Diego were exciting. It was a period of discovery and fun: the nice weather, the beaches, the desert… everything was new to me.
Now I look back and ask myself: what did I do in the past 10 years? All I can see work. Long days at work. Nights at work, too many weekends at work. When I don’t work on the weekends, I just try to recover from exhaustion.

To me France is a real place. It’s the place where my family lives. It’s the place where all by best friends live. In 15 years in San Diego, I have never been invited once by my neighbors. I don’t even know them to tell you the truth. I can count on my 2 hands the number of times I was invited for a dinner by some friends. I might be wrong or out of touch but it’s almost like what is really missing here (and I don’t know if it’s specific to Southern CA) is the fact that most people are not interested in strong and long-lasting relationships. I feel like people don’t need to have friends. They do just fine by themselves. Human relation don’t motivate them that much.
It’s what I miss about France. Being able to sit at a table with a good friend and a nice bottle of wine and talk all night about anything.

It will be hard to convince my ex-wife to move back to France. But I can give it a try.[/quote]

You probably don’t *have* to work long nights if you’re willing to cut down on your expenses somewhat…Don’t worry, when you get older like me, you begin to care less about working…sort of…

[Thibault]

[quote=scaredyclassic]perhaps you will make some friends, get to the seaside , but all you’d talk about is how much you miss your petite gosse and weep into your admittedly good wine. perhaps it is true that you do not smoke now, but soon you will be so depressed you will berolling cigarettes upon awakening, missing your little girl. for now, it appears, home is in the united states. san diego may Gd have mercy our your soul. you may have dual citizenship, but we have you by the gosses. I WANT TO GO HOME!!!!![/quote]

Ah ah. Good point but as I said, I am not looking at leaving for good. I am just trying to find a way to go to France more often, and maybe work from there a few weeks per year.
Spending the entire summer with my daughter in France would be a huge improvement.

[Thibault]

[quote=flu] You probably don’t *have* to work long nights if you’re willing to cut down on your expenses somewhat…Don’t worry, when you get older like me, you begin to care less about working…sort of…[/quote]

I didn’t have a choice. Being in charge of software configuration, I have to be available during code deployment to production which usually occurs at night to minimize impact on customers.
And working extra hours in my job doesn’t make me more rich. I am not a hourly employee.
Sure I start to care less about working… but I still work as much as I use to when I just started!

[CA renter]

[quote=Thibault]Great post scaredy, even though I have never smoked and I despise Le Monde.

When I first came here, my plan was never to stay in the US forever. I just got stuck in a situation I couldn’t get out of.
The first few years in San Diego were exciting. It was a period of discovery and fun: the nice weather, the beaches, the desert… everything was new to me.
Now I look back and ask myself: what did I do in the past 10 years? All I can see work. Long days at work. Nights at work, too many weekends at work. When I don’t work on the weekends, I just try to recover from exhaustion.

To me France is a real place. It’s the place where my family lives. It’s the place where all by best friends live. In 15 years in San Diego, I have never been invited once by my neighbors. I don’t even know them to tell you the truth. I can count on my 2 hands the number of times I was invited for a dinner by some friends. I might be wrong or out of touch but it’s almost like what is really missing here (and I don’t know if it’s specific to Southern CA) is the fact that most people are not interested in strong and long-lasting relationships. I feel like people don’t need to have friends. They do just fine by themselves. Human relation don’t motivate them that much.
It’s what I miss about France. Being able to sit at a table with a good friend and a nice bottle of wine and talk all night about anything.

It will be hard to convince my ex-wife to move back to France. But I can give it a try.[/quote]

Homesickness is a horrible thing, but what you might be experiencing is a longing for all the freedom and enjoyment of youth…and the feeling that life is so full of opportunities and possibilities.

I was born and raised in Los Angeles and while it’s not far from here, I miss it so very much. When I visit (which is fairly frequently), my friends who’ve stayed there tell me things are not like they used to be. In my mind, all of my friends from youth are hiking, dancing, and having fun — just like we used to do — while I sit at home here in SD in a “boring, sterile suburb.” But it’s not true. They are sitting in their homes now, too, because that is the stage of life we are all in right now.

In other words, France will have changed, even Paris, since you’ve lived there. Your friends will be older, many will be married with kids, and this tends to keep people in their houses instead of out and about in society. This is probably why places like Carmel Valley are so sterile. It’s mostly families who are in the middle of their child-rearing and peak working years. There is simply not enough time to live like people do when they are young and free to do whatever they like, whenever they like.

One thing I think is different for you is that you are divorced and have your child only half of the time. This puts you in that in-between stage, where you have some of the freedoms of youth (you’re single and have time to go out), yet you still have some of the obligations of people who are married with children (you’re obliged to be there for your child, and can’t do whatever you want because you have a commitment there). It’s like you live half of your time in one life, and half of your time in another. It’s probably not easy to adjust to this.

Other posters have presented some good ideas, though. Carmel Valley is probably not the place to be when you are single, so that’s one strike against you. I like spdrun’s idea of renting out the CV home and renting a small apartment or house in a more working-class neighborhood that is more active and full of single people. It’s certainly worth a try. If that doesn’t work, I like the idea of trying to convince your ex to move to France, though that probably wouldn’t be easy.

In the meantime, keep thinking about things you could do professionally that would enable you to move to France, at least for part of the year.

And I agree with you 100% about France (Europeans, in general) and their philosophy about working to live, instead of living to work. Not so sure we’re in any better position in the U.S. because of this mentality, though it’s certainly made a handful of powerful people at the top very, very rich.

[EconProf]

I must agree with CAR that much of your perception comes from your living in an upper-middle class suburb with busy families anxious to put their kids on the fast track. That is just not a demographic you can connect with. San Diego has lots of other, generally older, neighborhoods where you’d feel more at home.
A bit about France, now vs. those good old days you pine for…the French economy is barely growing, taxes are driving the high achievers in your age group to live in London, social and racial problems abound, and there is little prospect for improvement. Your memories are from the years when Europe was booming and everybody was happier.
Much as I credit our market capitalism for delivering our high standard of living, its downside is how it bombards us with advertising that relentlessly urges us to consume. As a result our values are shaped into being materialistic and equating money with happiness. We work more hours than people in most other countries as a result of this. We can’t defer gratification and we go into debt instead of saving up for our purchases. Being in debt is depressing in the long run, but it makes the marketers happy. The French, like most Europeans, are far better at taming their appetites and living within their means. Your dissatisfaction with our frantic lifestyle is a healthy and understandable impulse.

[Coronita]

[quote=Thibault][quote=flu] You probably don’t *have* to work long nights if you’re willing to cut down on your expenses somewhat…Don’t worry, when you get older like me, you begin to care less about working…sort of…[/quote]

I didn’t have a choice. Being in charge of software configuration, I have to be available during code deployment to production which usually occurs at night to minimize impact on customers.
And working extra hours in my job doesn’t make me more rich. I am not a hourly employee.
Sure I start to care less about working… but I still work as much as I use to when I just started![/quote]

Can I have you talk to our configuration management/release team?

Because for them, they “work from home” more often then work in the office. And when they are “working for home”, sometimes their “on-call” cell phone during normal business hours between 8am-5pm goes unanswered for like 3-4 hours..

But in all seriousness, sounds like the perfect reason to push for CM/release management automation….

[svelte]

There are several software companies here in San Diego that allow you to take unpaid time off. I’d recommend you take a job with one of them.

You wouldn’t get paid for those weeks obviously, but it sounds as if quality of life is more important to you than maximizing income.

I know several people who supplement their company supplied 3-4 weeks off with 2 or more unpaid weeks off a year. They are happy as clams.

We love France by the way. We go every chance we get.

[all]

[quote=Thibault]
I am a software configuration manager / release engineer, not a developer.
Basically I am in charge of the code repository in a software organization. I take care of the builds, manage the releases to production etc. It is more of a support role.[/quote]

Mr. Jenkins, is that you?

[flyer]

My wife and I have lived in France for extended periods, so I can understand how you must feel. She attended the Paris-Sorbonne Universite, and that experience has stayed with her–in her music, in her art, in her cooking–and in most aspects of her life to this day.

We’ve found that you can live a very cosmopolitan lifestyle, even being based in San Diego. Perhaps the nature of my profession as a airline pilot, and my wife’s profession in the film industry have allowed us to connect with others of similar ideas and aspirations, to create the lives we want to live.

Perhaps, you could reach out to others who have the same depth of interests you have, and, in that, you might find a more rewarding life here, or wherever you may choose to go.

[paramount]

I’ve always felt that overall Europeans have a better lifestyle than Americans. Less hours, more vacation – seems like a better lifestyle to me – even if you do enjoy your job.

A few suggestions to semi-retire:

1. Move to Temecula (use your CV equity to buy cheap in Temecula with no/or little mortgage.)

Less debt = More Freedom.

2. Once you have your new cheap house in Temecula, become an independent contractor.

3. Hang out @ Pechanga.

4. Donate some of your free time to a cause you find rewarding.

[ucodegen]

[quote=flu]But in all seriousness, sounds like the perfect reason to push for CM/release management automation….[/quote]I am beginning to suspect that he does work with one of the more standard software config packages. I suspect he has to be there to ‘force’ the release system should something go wrong on a pushed update. Sounds that they may not have an internal system that they can use for full release testing. Some places go for a minimal set or none at all in terms of equipment for release testing. This results in a ‘scramble’ if something doesn’t go well on an update.

This is something I experienced where I worked previously. I ended going up to Alaska on releases (or other locations). Diff was, I am an engineer not CM. We would ‘backfill’ the SCM system if an emergency patch was needed. We would go to site with full software source on high end notebooks and full dev environment(encrypted boot and source disks if you plan to ask). If update didn’t “go as planned”, mods done to software at site and then CM’d later, followed by doing a baseline extract and compare against source copy of what we installed – after patches.

[no_such_reality]

[quote=Thibault][quote=flu] You probably don’t *have* to work long nights if you’re willing to cut down on your expenses somewhat…Don’t worry, when you get older like me, you begin to care less about working…sort of…[/quote]

I didn’t have a choice. Being in charge of software configuration, I have to be available during code deployment to production which usually occurs at night to minimize impact on customers.
And working extra hours in my job doesn’t make me more rich. I am not a hourly employee.
Sure I start to care less about working… but I still work as much as I use to when I just started![/quote]

I suspect your real issue is your role in the organization is part of the new global economy tech sweatshop.

It doesn’t matter where you go, if you don’t change careers, the issues will be the same. Expectations to work night and weekends to ‘do the release’ and then expectations to work normal business hours to support developers and management.

The other option is to just develop a cavallier attitude to flex time and crank your hours back to 40-45 per week. The worse they can do is fire you and everyone should be fire once in their life.

It’s always a good discussion with management and will readily tell you if your manager is a human or a clueless corporate drone just trying to step on people to get ahead.

Needing to work extra time is part of job, needing to work extra time every week isn’t.

[spdrun]

Temecula lol. So you’d be trading proximity to beaches, cultural events, etc for a long commute and a more suBURPan area. Seems like a path from the frying pan into the fire. Pechanga? Sure. If you want to become friends with alcoholic compulsive gamblers.

[scaredyclassic]

[quote=spdrun]Temecula lol. So you’d be trading proximity to beaches, cultural events, etc for a long commute and a more suBURPan area. Seems like a path from the frying pan into the fire. Pechanga? Sure. If you want to become friends with alcoholic compulsive gamblers.[/quote]

rent a room from temeculaguy.

[FlyerInHi]

I think that I have a solution.

The OP is apparently a good, dedicated parent. He should change career and become a stay-at-home dad.

CAr said that there’re plenty of women would love to have a stay-at-home husband. And who better to be a stay-at-home parent than a family oriented French guy? Gorgeous house, excellent cuisine, interesting conversations, stimulating entertainment for the family…. no mindless TV watching, reading Victor Hugo and Honore de Balzac instead. Tintin too.

Take care of the family and take the kids to France during school holidays. Travel for education so the kids learn French language and culture.

[Author]

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