I have done squat on this site in the last month. Wow.
Perhaps that’s because I’ve been preparing for this fact: I’m moving. Rather, I’m about to move. (More precisely, I plan to relocate in the near future.) This will be the biggest move of my life, from Minneapolis to the San Francisco area—Oakland, to be exact, at least at first.
You may know that I’ve been talking about this for a long time. You may not realize when I’m going. Though this one is not quite as sudden as my last move (from decision to move in one week), it is coming up quickly. Let’s call it August 13th: roughly one month from now.
In reality, I’m moving out of this apartment in two weeks to make way for Holly, Amber’s new roommate (and a friend of hers since elementary school). The move will be pretty cheap; my parents are going to provide a vehicle and some storage space for my biggest stuff (that I can’t sell in the next two weeks). I’ll come back and work for two more weeks, staying on the very comfortable couch in my soon-to-be-former living room, after which I’ll pile my necessities into my ’99 Acura and go west. My new roommates, Nick and Windy (pictured elsewhere), who will conveniently be in Wisconsin at the time, will ride along, providing driving relief and moral support.
So that’s it—I’m quitting my secure, steady, relatively good job. I’m leaving my comfy apartment with a roommate I get along with really well. I’m driving myself headlong into destinations and experiences unknown.
On the one hand, I must be nuts. On the other hand, I actually have a much better plan than I did when I moved here. Of course, when I moved here, I followed no plan at all.
What is life without change and risk? I really don’t want to live my life passively. I admit that less drastic change would almost certainly be less stressful, but there’s something extremely attractive about the kind of stress known as “adventure.”
I admit that a tiny kernel of fear remains buried in my heart. And yet the reactions of some of my friends, family, and acquaintances—essentially, “If I were your age, and I had the opportunity to move out there, and I weren’t tied down to a bunch of responsibilities (read: children and a house), I’d go in a second,” or simply, “I admire your guts”—help me remain confident that this is a really good idea.
I could write a hundred—a thousand—more pages analyzing all the issues surrounding this move. Maybe I’ll try to do a little each day (but my gut feeling is that I probably won’t).
You know what’s really, really good? “Oh, Inverted World” by The Shins.
