In a haze of writing last night I think I figured it all out. Why I’ve had this all-consuming fire to travel in the last three years, why I need to go back to Maine for a bit, why San Francisco thinks I’m ready to be kicked out of the nest, why it’s terrifying, and most important of all, why Glen Beck hasn’t yet been taken away by the men with the butterfly nets. But, of course, now I can only vaguely remember what all those revelations were, only that they made me feel marginally better about all these unknowns floating around my poor little universe.
Generally speaking, when people take a next step, they like to have some idea what they are stepping toward -- dog shit or paradise? A new professional chapter, or a new romantic one? Growing up, or embracing youth? I can’t lay claim to any such knowledge of what’s ahead of me. In a couple months I’m pulling an Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade, putting my hand over my heart, and stepping over what looks like a yawning black chasm, (but hopefully is something a little sturdier). Not to be dramatic, but hey. I know leaving is the right thing to do, it’s forward movement, and I just have to have faith in that first step, even if I can’t see the second. But, for a planner like me, this is not so easy. I can really only think of two other occasions like this when I felt no pull toward any one place, had no plan in place, or a goal, or a new job, or school. I feel ambivalent toward it all and so I’m standing still in San Francisco, and it doesn’t feel right. It’s not the good kind of standing still, the kind where you grow nice, homey, steady-like roots. No, it’s not like that. I’ve tried in the last year to dig in my scrawny shoots, but they haven’t taken hold. And so I’m standing here like one of those saplings wrapped in a burlap sap, waiting for a stiff wind to blow me one way or the next. And yet, not so much as a breeze. (This is where I stop this terrible metaphor. Your welcome.)
So, off I go, home again, home again jiggity jig. Which, being all, you know, home-like, brings with it its own panoply of emotional landmines, which I’ll have to be very patient with myself about dealing with. Even for someone who loves their family as much as I do, one thing doesn’t change when I go home, I’m still me, which means things are inevitably more complicated than they ever really need to be. I like to think that’s endearing.
Well, you know once you say it on a blog that means it’s really happening, right? So now, two months in Maine and if I’m lucky, plenty of strong wind.
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