It has nearly been six months since I moved to Houston from Oakland and six months exactly since it was the last day at my job working at the chocolate shop in Berkeley. The last day at work marked the beginning of the final dash towards getting myself and things out of the Bay and on the road towards Houston, Texas. What’s in Houston? My boyfriend aka my love, humidity that makes the swaths of lush green sparkle and glow like a dream, new prospects in every way, I was ready to exchange the weights I’d been dragging since 2020 with the weights of the big unknown state…of Texas.
Texas: Big trucks, Hill Country, oil fields, wide plains, styrofoam, fading small towns, swamps, armadillos, HEB—stands for ‘Howard E Butt’ or more recently, ‘Here Everything’s Better’, take your pick.
There’s soft and golden sunshine in Northern California, bright yellow and smiling at me. In Texas I get a lot of straight up sun, orange and hot, with a side of sunshine. It’s relentless and gorgeous, like an opera.
*at the time of publishing to this site, I have been in Houston for almost 9 months. I saw a headline yesterday about how yet another California company, Chevron, is moving their operations to Texas and encouraging their employees to relocate to Houston.