My first year in Texas: the good, the bad and the surprising

I’m reflecting on the good, the bad and the surprising of my first year in Texas. I took a huge risk moving my business and my family away from California. How has it gone?

I had a tough entry into my new life. Moving is insanely stressful. So much so that when I arrived in Texas after a cross-country move with a tot, something was wrong with my stomach. I’d never had debilitating stomach pain before and I figured it would just resolve itself. When it didn’t after about a week, my husband suggested calling a Teledoc, who advised me to get to the ER immediately after hearing my symptoms.

After fifteen years in Los Angeles, and thanks to a family member who worked in healthcare, I used to have access to some of the best doctors in the world. I also had access to an individual PPO (Preferred Provider Organization) insurance plan. These don’t really exist in Texas; the ones that do are cost prohibitive. Most people who have PPOs in Texas work for a corporation or the government. For the first time in my life, I had an HMO (Health Maintenance Organization), which is absolutely awful.

There are a lot of differences between HMOs and PPOs, like the flexibility of coverage and cost. For me the chief one, and the reason I always paid for a PPO, is that PPOs do not require patients to maintain a primary care physician, allowing them to see different doctors of their choice at any time, including specialists, without needing, and waiting for, a referral.

While waiting to see a doctor, for the referral, for my insurance to approve the referral — I seriously considered that I’d made a huge mistake, simply for the medical care I’d left behind.

My stomach issue resolved. It was indeed just stress, and now that I have a relationship with a primary care physician things seem a bit easier and more efficient in terms of getting in to see specialists and whatnot. A bit.

Next was the heat. Coming from California and spending a lot of time in the desert, I thought I knew heat. I knew nothing. This past summer was apparently one for the books. I remember in June thinking, “this really isn’t so bad.” A friend sent me a meme that said, “ATTENTION NEWCOMERS — TEXAS IS PREHEATING.” The locals weren’t lying. Having a toddler and not being able to spend time outside was excruciating. My summers in California were spent outside all day, riding my bike and exploring. I wanted that for her, too. Had I condemned her to an air-conditioned, housebound existence?

Then the water restrictions hit — they were somehow worse than California’s. The grass isn’t always greener. It’s brown. We couldn’t water our lawn at all. For months. Not to mention the strain all the running ACs put on the grid. Thanks to the rapid adoption of solar in Texas, the electricity managed to hold up for the most part. But a lot of these problems were exactly the problems I’d just left behind. When I was getting rid of my boxes, two sets of Californians took them. “We’re going back to Fresno,” a woman told me. “It’s too hot here.” The other Californians just said, “We hate it.”

I was more entrenched in daily California life than my husband. He loved it here immediately. I missed my aunt and uncle desperately. I missed the farmers markets and the ocean. I missed my friends and in-laws. My husband feared that I wanted to go back, but no part of me wanted to return; I just wondered if maybe we shouldn’t have gone all the way to the East Coast, to be close to my family. Here I was, a new mom with a one-year-old, completely isolated, in Hell. It was a hard transition. But I promised myself I would stick it out.

And I did, for the many upsides.

The comedy scene is wonderful. It’s truly supportive and I’m doing stand-up again. Our neighbors are good Christian folks who brought us brisket when we moved in. My daughter has a whole crew of neighborhood friends that she knows and hangs out with regularly at the park — and unlike Los Angeles, it’s not me and the nannies at the park; it’s me and the parents.

We got invited to a ranch over Labor Day weekend and it was stunning. There are tons of national parks to explore. The child is finally old enough to enjoy camping and Big Bend. She is obsessed with the stars because we can see them! The stars at night are in fact big and bright deep in the heart of Texas.

It’s truly diverse: not just demographic diversity but diversity of thought as well. I feel safer. There is opportunity here. The government, while still the government, isn’t actively trying to keep me in my lane. We were able to become homeowners, something that was impossible for us in California.

The longer I’m here, the more I love it. Texas is a strange place and I dig it. My in-laws moved here, so now we’ve imported family. I bought trees and, like them, I’m putting down roots.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s April 2024 World edition.