If for some bizarre reason a movie were to be made about my life, I think that one of the turning points would be centered on the trip that I took to Alaska. The three graduations and a wedding ceremony do not even come close to defining me.

For a few weeks it’s been nothing but gray outside. This bothers a lot of people. Other than making me want to spend all day watching movies and sleeping, it does not really bring me down. I guess I’m thinking a lot about how people can be overly negative and whiny about everything at all times. I know that technically, the lack of sunlight does have an effect on some, but really, I think that most complaining about the weather is just one more variety of “I bitch, therefore I am.”

So, this morning I’m driving to work, noticing all of these really cool things during the aftermath of a little ice storm. The chain link fence that divides my parking lot from the elderly housing complex was just covered. Chain link fences are improved by ice. When I drove past the hospital, I saw how little icicles were hanging inside of the wrought iron fence. Driving up Asylum Street, Scarborough, Albany Ave., and Bloomfield Avenue, I noticed how the tree branches and leaves took on a very light pink hue, which I never paid attention to before. Having lived in New England my whole life, I feel like winter is the norm, and that even in all of this gray, there’s beauty. But, some people, fixated only on the negative, see only the negative.

A few years ago I went to Alaska.

I never thought much about the place until I met someone from there who I decided on a whim to fly out to visit. In my life, things are planned and I hate air travel, so that should fill in some of the blanks of the story. I had no idea what to expect, so in the month between booking the flight(s) and actually leaving, I crammed, reading everything I could find about Alaska.

It’s cold a lot, but not all of the time. There’s darkness, but there’s light too. For a few months, it does not snow. What I found seductive about Alaska was this very basic philosophy. Maybe I’m stereotyping, but given the severity of the snow, ice, and cold during most of the year, people who live there have to just deal with it. If someone complains about the weather in Alaska, I think it’d be fair to say to them, “Well, no shit. It’s Alaska. What were you expecting?”

Occasionally I do consider moving there, if for no other reason than knowing that the other residents are probably not in denial about realities like driving in snow or having to wear boots with treads to work.

Like Alaska, Hartford’s “problems” are not constants, but if a person is looking to fulfill a negative and somewhat false stereotype, then he will miss the truth–nothing is constant, and a place can not be fairly or accurately defined by a single characteristic.

When I was in Alaska, it was warm and the summer mosquitoes were making themselves scarce.