Anything But Gray

I have been in Alaska for collectively 15 years.
There are 2 types of Alaskans.
Those who love it.
And those who hate it.
The majority of the people fall into one category or another. You don't see a whole hell of a lot of "in the middle".

In all my years living here I have never seen such displeasure in the people as I have been seeing in the last couple of weeks. But talking with my girlfriends yesterday and realizing that they don't agree and I think they might have even thought I was being melodramatic, makes me realize how completely divided this town can be sometimes.

Being in real estate makes your circle of people that you talk to on a regular basis extremely diverse and over the last couple of weeks, I have heard more times than I can count from countless different people how they are ready to pack up and leave. I have heard people that love Alaska, say it. I have heard people that hate Alaska, say it. Rich people, middle income people, fishermen, retail workers…I have literally heard it from every "category" of person you can think of. And I have just never heard such displeasure for this town from so many different people in all the years I have been here. It's unsettling, to say the least and makes me actually a little bit worried for the future of this town. I don't think the whole town is going to fall apart but I do have a sneaking suspicion that it's going to be rough for awhile in Juneau.

Apparently we can handle it when we have a long ass winter that won't quit….
We can handle having a governor that most people believe hates Juneau.
We can handle the threat of the capitol moving looming over our heads constantly…
We can handle mine issues..
We can handle the lack of affordable housing.
And we can even handle our power source being wiped out and having to pay a ridiculous amount of money for our electricity….
But apparently having it all happen at once, that's a bit tougher to deal with.

I predict….Juneau will see the biggest drop in population it has seen in years, this summer.

Let's just say I am REALLY happy we had already planned to move and reserved our uhaul months ago….