Don't fence me in
I will admit the following is a bit of a plagiarism of an email I just sent to one of my best friends. Though, it's something I've been thinking about for a while, so there you go. You are about to visit the inner me a bit.
One of my two best friends has just informed me she is intending to move to a different city. This is why I have to return in July -- because she is the one that is storing the 20 boxes or so of belongings I kept from my apartment, and I will have to move them elsewhere. Or perhaps I will get rid of even more stuff. I can't remember what I have in some of the boxes and to me that signifies that I can probably live without whatever those items are.
My other best friend sent me an email saying that he occasionally fantasizes about leaving Seattle for somewhere else. Part of it is based on his wanderlust, part of it is based on wanting to create a fresh life elsewhere (like what my other best friend is doing).
As to me, the longer I travel, the more I feel a strong desire to not 'settle down' someplace for longer than a few months. A friend of mine used to say that I'd lived in Seattle too long (this was spurred by me being able to accurately count in my mind the number of streets between us and the restaurant we were going to -- it was about 12), and that I needed to move to another city. I used to think that he was just trying to impose his own lifestyle of moving cities every few years. Now, I think he was right.
It's fair to say that my last year in Seattle was a sea change for me. [note: if you don't know what this is, search google for 'sea change shakespeare'] I have mixed feelings about going back to a city to 'settle' with such memories. Those memories, of course, are not currently fresh in my mind, largely because I've been travelling around, meeting new people and not in regular contact with most of my friends. The longer I travel, the fewer of my friends keep in contact with me, which I think can be telling of the friendship. Or, as someone pointed out to me when I was in Argentina, it could also be a sign of them not being in contact because I am so far away, in a sort of polite 'out of sight, out of mind'. In any case, I feel like I've learned who are truer friends, as opposed to ones that write very erratically or immediately after I send one of my monthly emails (and the people that do this are increasingly fewer and fewer each month).
But I digress.
I have found there are very few people I truly miss. I don't want to get in to the specifics of whom I do and whom I don't, in the effort to not hurt any feelings. Also, in not missing some people as much as others, it does not mean to me that I don't care about those people.
I've found that after travelling around for so long, that I'm pretty much loathe to return to Seattle to 'settle' again. I know the current plan is to go back for several months, and then come back to Europe and work on finding a teaching job. However, I know how I am and I know that I can't predict what may happen when I return. Perhaps I will come across a brilliant job and decide to stay longer because of that. Perhaps I will find a brilliant man and fall in love again. I love travelling, but my ties to Seattle are so strong (it is where I was raised and where I lived for nearly my entire life) that it can be difficult to actually get up and go when I've been there for a while. This, in combination of a large group of friends that either haven't travelled as much or like I am now, or just don't share teh wanderlust I have. I know many people with what I consider 'static' lives. While most of them are happy that way, I realize that I wasn't entirely happy that way, and I know that right now, that is not something I desire At All.
I'm always so much happier when I'm out travelling, experiencing new things and meeting new people. I've so very much enjoyed hearing other people's travel stories, and meeting people that travel is vitally important, too. For so long, travelling for a long time was this fantastic dream of mine, and one that very, very, very few people I know could really relate to. At one point, I had to have a rather long conversation with someone that I had spent a great deal of time with, to explain to him why this was important to me. He couldn't understand that being a Career Girl was not the life I want. He was, as he once said, on the way to Yuppie-dom, and he just really didn't seem to grasp that while that that was fine for him, it wasn't the lifestyle choice that would make me happy. This conversation was also especially disconcerting because we had been rather close for several months, and I had imagined he knew me well enough to be able to understand why I would say it was important. That he couldn't imagine the importance to me of travelling for an extended period of time was a shock to me. Aside from him, it also came to my attention that other people never believed I would make this trip. Which just goes to show how little those people knew me (and I thought at least one of them in particular knew me very, very well). I have other friends who never doubted my trip, and they are the ones that I tend to be closer to. They understand what travelling means to me, because they tend to feel the same way about it. As my mother said when I told her about this trip: "I know you will do this. Once you set your mind to anything, you do it." Which is how I ended up in Australia for two months in 1989-1990, how I ended up putting myself through college [after initially dropping out and working for a few years], how I came to Europe the first time, and how I came to do many other things in my life.
But again, I digress.
Perhaps I will move with the one friend to another city, and try that out for a bit. Creating a new life from scratch is so appealing to me right now. My life this past seven or so months has been ruled by freedom and new experiences, that I'm loathe to return to what I know. Perhaps I will try to convince the other friend to move to a new city with me. I hate the idea of not living in the same city as at least one of my two best friends. I have a great, great deal of history with both of them and I would not want to let the history run thin because of geography. And the phone bills would be monstrous.
Perhaps you may consider this aversion to living in Seattle a matter of running away, in consideration of my allusions to my last year in Seattle. I once wrote a post about that year, but it has languished in draft status for months, and I don't know if I will ever post it here.
I'm still a commitment-phobe in some ways. I need to feel a compelling reason to live somewhere, and right now, I'm not sure that Seattle is compelling enough for me. I'm very happy being an urban nomad.
And to be clear, this post is not about me being unhappy. It's just about something important that I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about over the past several weeks.
Now, I believe it is time to return to the hotel swimming pool. Quite lovely and has a fantastic panoramic view of the city.
Oh, and I *will* be watching the Euro Championship football match tonight. And then hopefully spending a bit more Quality Time with the lovely boy from the other night... Before I leave, I want to go dancing with him.
He is the other thing constantly in my mind these last 30 hours or so. And so sweet the thoughts are!
One of my two best friends has just informed me she is intending to move to a different city. This is why I have to return in July -- because she is the one that is storing the 20 boxes or so of belongings I kept from my apartment, and I will have to move them elsewhere. Or perhaps I will get rid of even more stuff. I can't remember what I have in some of the boxes and to me that signifies that I can probably live without whatever those items are.
My other best friend sent me an email saying that he occasionally fantasizes about leaving Seattle for somewhere else. Part of it is based on his wanderlust, part of it is based on wanting to create a fresh life elsewhere (like what my other best friend is doing).
As to me, the longer I travel, the more I feel a strong desire to not 'settle down' someplace for longer than a few months. A friend of mine used to say that I'd lived in Seattle too long (this was spurred by me being able to accurately count in my mind the number of streets between us and the restaurant we were going to -- it was about 12), and that I needed to move to another city. I used to think that he was just trying to impose his own lifestyle of moving cities every few years. Now, I think he was right.
It's fair to say that my last year in Seattle was a sea change for me. [note: if you don't know what this is, search google for 'sea change shakespeare'] I have mixed feelings about going back to a city to 'settle' with such memories. Those memories, of course, are not currently fresh in my mind, largely because I've been travelling around, meeting new people and not in regular contact with most of my friends. The longer I travel, the fewer of my friends keep in contact with me, which I think can be telling of the friendship. Or, as someone pointed out to me when I was in Argentina, it could also be a sign of them not being in contact because I am so far away, in a sort of polite 'out of sight, out of mind'. In any case, I feel like I've learned who are truer friends, as opposed to ones that write very erratically or immediately after I send one of my monthly emails (and the people that do this are increasingly fewer and fewer each month).
But I digress.
I have found there are very few people I truly miss. I don't want to get in to the specifics of whom I do and whom I don't, in the effort to not hurt any feelings. Also, in not missing some people as much as others, it does not mean to me that I don't care about those people.
I've found that after travelling around for so long, that I'm pretty much loathe to return to Seattle to 'settle' again. I know the current plan is to go back for several months, and then come back to Europe and work on finding a teaching job. However, I know how I am and I know that I can't predict what may happen when I return. Perhaps I will come across a brilliant job and decide to stay longer because of that. Perhaps I will find a brilliant man and fall in love again. I love travelling, but my ties to Seattle are so strong (it is where I was raised and where I lived for nearly my entire life) that it can be difficult to actually get up and go when I've been there for a while. This, in combination of a large group of friends that either haven't travelled as much or like I am now, or just don't share teh wanderlust I have. I know many people with what I consider 'static' lives. While most of them are happy that way, I realize that I wasn't entirely happy that way, and I know that right now, that is not something I desire At All.
I'm always so much happier when I'm out travelling, experiencing new things and meeting new people. I've so very much enjoyed hearing other people's travel stories, and meeting people that travel is vitally important, too. For so long, travelling for a long time was this fantastic dream of mine, and one that very, very, very few people I know could really relate to. At one point, I had to have a rather long conversation with someone that I had spent a great deal of time with, to explain to him why this was important to me. He couldn't understand that being a Career Girl was not the life I want. He was, as he once said, on the way to Yuppie-dom, and he just really didn't seem to grasp that while that that was fine for him, it wasn't the lifestyle choice that would make me happy. This conversation was also especially disconcerting because we had been rather close for several months, and I had imagined he knew me well enough to be able to understand why I would say it was important. That he couldn't imagine the importance to me of travelling for an extended period of time was a shock to me. Aside from him, it also came to my attention that other people never believed I would make this trip. Which just goes to show how little those people knew me (and I thought at least one of them in particular knew me very, very well). I have other friends who never doubted my trip, and they are the ones that I tend to be closer to. They understand what travelling means to me, because they tend to feel the same way about it. As my mother said when I told her about this trip: "I know you will do this. Once you set your mind to anything, you do it." Which is how I ended up in Australia for two months in 1989-1990, how I ended up putting myself through college [after initially dropping out and working for a few years], how I came to Europe the first time, and how I came to do many other things in my life.
But again, I digress.
Perhaps I will move with the one friend to another city, and try that out for a bit. Creating a new life from scratch is so appealing to me right now. My life this past seven or so months has been ruled by freedom and new experiences, that I'm loathe to return to what I know. Perhaps I will try to convince the other friend to move to a new city with me. I hate the idea of not living in the same city as at least one of my two best friends. I have a great, great deal of history with both of them and I would not want to let the history run thin because of geography. And the phone bills would be monstrous.
Perhaps you may consider this aversion to living in Seattle a matter of running away, in consideration of my allusions to my last year in Seattle. I once wrote a post about that year, but it has languished in draft status for months, and I don't know if I will ever post it here.
I'm still a commitment-phobe in some ways. I need to feel a compelling reason to live somewhere, and right now, I'm not sure that Seattle is compelling enough for me. I'm very happy being an urban nomad.
And to be clear, this post is not about me being unhappy. It's just about something important that I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about over the past several weeks.
Now, I believe it is time to return to the hotel swimming pool. Quite lovely and has a fantastic panoramic view of the city.
Oh, and I *will* be watching the Euro Championship football match tonight. And then hopefully spending a bit more Quality Time with the lovely boy from the other night... Before I leave, I want to go dancing with him.
He is the other thing constantly in my mind these last 30 hours or so. And so sweet the thoughts are!
posted by Shana @ 6:11 AM
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