I’ve had it in my mind for more than a year that I am really ready to move.  I’ve been in California for five and a half years now, and I have grown to love it way more than I ever expected to, but I’m ready to go somewhere new.

That seemed perfectly reasonable. But in the Fall, what was reasonable became something else.  Let’s call it unreasonable.  This place started to suffocate me and getting out became urgent.  So urgent that I was projecting my own feelings onto everyone else, thinking “how does anyone stay anywhere for more than a couple years?”

And that’s when I started to question my motivations, because there are some problems that putting yourself in a new location will solve, but you’re still going to be the same person, living the same kind of life.  I wasn’t trying to escape myself–I actually kind of like being me these days–but I was ready to take off to anywhere to solve a problem that would only follow me.

I think the reality was that I had grown bored with my life, which strikes me as both a simple and terrifying problem.  Most of the time I’m trying to figure out how to do everything at once, but sometimes I find myself not wanting to do anything at all.  I’m not talking about a lazy Sunday on the couch, but a loss of meaning and purpose.

I’ve always hidden myself from thoughts like these and buried them under piles of distraction.  I know a lot of answers to the questions I am asking myself, but I am hesitant to take the obvious steps. When your world has gotten too small, then you have to make it bigger, but everything is so comfortable here and does this mean I have to talk to people I don’t already know?

I was thinking a lot of thoughts about staying where I am, and then it seemed that every movie I watched was set in LA, and it was like I had to be reminded that this is an interesting place, and even if I plan to leave sooner and not later, there is a lot here that have left to do.  I’ve never been to Griffith Observatory, I want to see San Diego, the last time I hiked the big mountain behind me was four years ago, I could waste many more hours at Manhattan Beach, and the people responsible for the comedy podcasts I have been obsessed with for years put on cheap shows all the time and I never go!

I have a new attitude about staying here.

California did not sweep me off my feet.  It slowly won me over.  But now I love it here.

In some ways, I’m not really a person who location matters to that much.  Give me a place of my own, my computer, my journal, my music, and I could be happy just about anywhere.  It took me at least two years to treat California as anything more than the place I happen to be living right now.  It seemed very temporary to me, so I didn’t commit, I didn’t explore, and I didn’t let myself love it.  I guess I thought that if I learned to like it here too much, I’d lose my nerve to make another big move.

When I decided to stay in California to finish my education, I made a conscious decision to really settle here.  Except, I had no idea how to do that and I was too busy to make it a priority.  I have a bad habit of only seeing what’s happening around me when I happen to look up from whatever has my attention.  But there’s a hidden value to making goals and grand declarations.  You put an idea in your head and it stays there even when you’re not acting on it.

When things got really crazy and I was working all the time, I started walking a lot.  Sometimes walking between jobs was the only time I really had to let my mind wander. It became my way to deal with things, so I started walking even when I didn’t have a destination.  Sometimes I would put my ear buds, start walking, and lose myself so completely in thought that I would be surprised to suddenly arrive wherever I was going.   But when I wasn’t so haunted, I would look around and notice that it’s really very beautiful here.

My city is particularly lovely. I think college campuses are magical. They’re peaceful, yet so alive.  And I live in the midst of many of them.  It’s all green grass, beautiful buildings, flying Frisbees, people reading under trees and sitting on benches playing cellos (witnessed this yesterday), and undergrads riding by on unicycles.  I can walk everywhere I need to go.  Really cool things are always happening not too far away.  It’s sunny all the time, which is not something I ever thought I’d care about, but it’s an appreciation that found me in year three or so.

Still, I want to move.  There is something that appeals to me about living in the same place for a very long time, but there is also something very unsatisfying about that idea.  In August, I will have been here for five years and I am getting anxious.

I want the novelty of a new place and I question myself in this to a degree.  I know I’m not running from anything, but I think maybe I’m searching for something and I’ll be disappointed to find it’s the same me everywhere I go.  That could be, but I’m not sure it does me any good to sit here with my pride.  Better to take the risk and collect the experiences.  California will always be here (assuming it doesn’t fall into the ocean) and so will home (again about the ocean).

There are some practical concerns.  For one, I don’t know where to go yet.  For another, I have a job here and jobs aren’t all that easy to come by at the moment.  And then there’s the PhD, which no longer requires me to be here, but staying local would make it easier.

None of this is new.  I’ve written about it all several times before.  But it’s growing more and more serious in my mind and last week I made the grand declaration: I’m moving.  I’m not sure how or when the pieces will come together, but the idea is there in my mind and it is persistent.

I have a really nice and cozy bed in Washington, but I left it behind when I moved to California for grad school.  I packed only what I could fit in my Civic and had my mom mail me the rest of my books.  I furnished my first apartment with the cheapest stuff I could find at IKEA.  My bed didn’t quite fit together properly and the mattress was about as thin as a piece of paper (slight exaggeration), but it was better than the floor and I didn’t have the money to buy anything more comfortable.

Two moves later and I now sleep on a futon that is, again, more comfortable than the floor, but just barely.  I’m usually too tired to care, but just often enough I sleep in a real bed and get to thinking that it would be nice to have one of my own.  I told myself it would be a priority once I was out of debt.  Well, that time is now and the thought of sleeping on a cloud every night is very tempting, but I’m hesitating.

It’s just that I want to live different places and as soon as I finish coursework in May, I will have the freedom to go anywhere. In all likelihood, I will probably stay here until I finish my degree.  That is certainly the easiest and most practical choice, but there’s a big part of me pondering other options.  I’ve grown to love California in a way I didn’t expect, but I’ve been here for nearly five years now and that seems like it might be just long enough.

What I’m getting at is that I looked around my apartment the other day and I realized how easily I could pack up my clothes, nail polish, and books and be on my way.  I don’t know if I want to spend several hundred dollars on something that it probably wouldn’t make sense to take with me.  I’m not sure I want to make that big of a commitment to California when I have secret dreams of New York.  But, what I really don’t want to do is spend another three years sleeping on something that only just barely beats the floor (okay, so it’s not that bad, but it’s certainly not a cloud).

Today is my four year California anniversary. I made the drive from Washington by myself.  I just knew it was something I had to do alone and my parents didn’t object, though I found out later that they had some heated conversations behind my back and didn’t tell my grandma until I’d made it safely to California.

Grad school felt like a decision I’d made on a whim, though I researched schools, applied, and waited impatiently for a response.  I applied to just one school, because it was the only place I wanted to study theology.  I wasn’t sure about moving back to California (I’d spent my first year of college here), but it was at least familiar.

If the grad school thing didn’t work out, I would do something else, but I found out I was accepted before it became necessary to assemble Plan B.  I can think of a lot of alternative plans I would have been happy with, but I needed to get away from home and I knew theology was not something I could ignore.

I didn’t remember until I was reading old journals that I felt this need to prove myself and I felt like I could only do that in a place all by myself.  I guess it comes with being the youngest.  I hate to say the words, but I didn’t feel like people took me seriously and I guess I wanted to prove myself by pursuing my dreams away from the people who knew me.  It was just an insecurity thing, really, because I don’t think much about proving myself to anyone anymore, least of all my family.  Not since I proved to myself that I could do it.

It was not easy.  My first year of grad school, I was sick and dizzy from nerves and stress that made eating difficult.  I had a lot of big feelings.  I didn’t have enough people in my life to talk to, because I’d left them all behind.  I found out I really had a talent for writing and theology.  I adopted a school of thought that put to rest the war between my faith and education.  And I didn’t run away when things became difficult, even if I did think several times of how easy it would be to jump in my car and head straight up I-5.

I’m really very different from the person I was four years ago when I moved down here.  We share a lot of the same feelings, but while she was always teetering near destruction, I am on much more solid footing.  She needed for things to work out, because she didn’t know what she would do if they didn’t, and I need for things to work out, because they’re what I want.  She was worried about depression, and I disappear from my desk at least once a day to walk out feelings much more manic.  We’re both confused about what people need and want from us, but while she tried to figure it out from the sidelines, I’m trying to figure it out from the trenches.

And, California.  California grows on me more and more every year.  I could only get away with I’m not really a California kind of person for so long before I noticed that it’s lovely here and there’s so much to do and walking outside at every odd hour you can think of wearing a t-shirt does not get old.  I always thought I would end up back in the Northwest, but four days of overcast when I was last there was wearing.  Rain, I love, and nothing beats a gorgeous August day in Seattle, but I forgot about all the grey that fills up the rest of the calendar.  I still want to live other places, but I’m enjoying my time here in California and I’m not ready to go anywhere just yet.

Here’s to another four years, California. I’m not leaving without a Ph.D.

Written on Tuesday night when I really should have been reading for class.

I love when it rains in Southern California, because I’m a big fan of rain and, well, this is where I live now. It’s crazy the way it throws life completely off balance.

The strange thing about California, especially a college town in California, is that no one is native to the area. Everyone is from somewhere else. There’s me from the Northwest, a lot of East Coasters, and a ton of people from the Mid-West. We’ve known real weather. But you would never guess it if you saw us in the rain.

When I got to class this afternoon, there were only about five people there. That’s less than a quarter of the class. And, of those people, all were decked out in at least three times as much clothing as they normally wear, including rain boots and scarves and even gloves. At that point, it had only sprinkled a little bit in our area, but just the threat of rain had sent people digging through their closets. The rest of the class slowly filtered in and they did not disappoint with their trench coats, knee-high boots, and rain hats. I was surprised not see anyone in full-on waders.

I take a certain delight in seeing people all dressed up in their excessive gear. It’s just a little rain and nothing to make a big deal about. But the joke was on me when a few minutes into class, it started to pour. California doesn’t let the rain fall very often, but when it does, it really does. The only precaution I’d taken was to bring my rain jacket and of course I’d left that in my car. I wasn’t the only smug one. Another of my classmates had biked to class. Served us right.

If the forecast can be trusted, then by the time I post this, we’ll be back to clear and sunny skies. But while it’s here, the rain is easing some of that longing I feel when I pass all the pretty pea coats in the stores, knowing that even if I bought that red one with the brass buttons, I’d never get a chance to wear it.

Before the rain is gone, I hope I can find some time to sit by a window and watch it fall. It reminds me of home and years passed.

Watching TV as a kid, I was envious of how it always seemed so easy for the characters to get where they were going.  Everything was always magically within walking distance.  Growing up in the suburbs on the West Coast, this was pretty far from my reality.  I could walk to the houses of my friends in the neighborhood, but my friends from school lived too far away.  We could ride our bikes to the pizza place or the little drugstore that sold candy, but they were far enough away that making the trek was an event and we didn’t do it often.  Getting a little older didn’t make much of a difference, because, for the most part, West Coasters aren’t big on public transportation.  Things are spread very far apart and there’s little chance of getting anywhere you need to be without a car.

This always felt very limiting to me as a kid–probably because my only job was to try to keep myself entertained.  Man did that freedom taste sweet when I got my license at 16 and then a car at 17.  I owned the town, except now I had to spend my time driving across it: to school, to work, and then back home.  Take my senior year of college, for example.  I lived on the west side of town, went to school on the south, had a job on the east, and then another job on the north.  Every day I spent at least an hour driving and without ever leaving the city.

So it was weird for me to move down here to California where I am lucky enough to work and live and go to school all within the space of only a few blocks.  By car, my longest commute is about 2 minutes (15 by foot).  I appreciated it right from the beginning, but even now it’s kind of weird to me.  It’s like I live in freaking Stars Hollow or something–just replace the quirky townsfolk with quirky academics.

But the strange thing about my life here in this little bubble is that while I used to have separate groups of friends and coworkers all unique to their locations and with nothing in common except for me, now everyone I know knows everyone else. New people I meet on campus recognize me from the library.  I see my neighbors in class. My coworkers sometimes know my professors.  I guess it’s limiting in another way, but for now, it’s just what I need.

This probably makes me sound crazy, but it’s weird to me to have so many people know who I am.  Just that so many people know my name is weird, but that they also know where I work and what I study and how I spend my free time and where I live is very different for me.  It’s not the semi-anonymous, ships-passing-in-the-night kind of life that it’s so easy to live these days.  This non-anonymous life has brought a lot of really great things my way.  It means that people can really get to know me.  That I’ve been considered for amazing opportunities.  And that I can get comfortable in a place.

Still, we all need a little escape, so I’ll keep this blog a secret until the day it eventually collides with my other–but no more real–life.

I was at Target several weeks ago, and I happened upon some cute socks that were on clearance.  They were striped and adorable and marked down to only a couple dollars, so I didn’t debate long before I put them in my basket and moved along.  It wasn’t until I was up at the register getting ready to pay when I remembered that I have a whole drawer full of cute socks at home, and I can’t remember the last time I wore any of them.  It’s then that it hit me:  I don’t live in Washington anymore. I live in California.  It’s hot here all the time. I don’t wear socks because I live in California where it is hot all the time.

You might have noticed from my regular use of “and then I realized” and “and then it hit me” that I’m quite prone to sudden realizations.  Maybe it’s because my head is too often in the clouds.  Or, maybe it’s just a normal human thing.  I’ve had the sudden realization that I live in California at least a dozen times, but I just can’t seem to get it through my head.  I don’t wear socks anymore.  My once great hooded sweatshirt collection sits abandoned in my closet.  There are now California plates on my car.  I have a California driver’s license.  I voted in the last election as a Californian.  And, I have no plans to live anywhere else in the foreseeable future.

There are several reasons why I’ve been slow to accept that I live in California.  First, I never thought I would live here.  I didn’t think I was a California kind of person.   I just never got the allure.  Second, when you’re still in school, it’s very easy to adopt an attitude of temporariness.  School seems like just a phase to pass through before real life begins.  It’s a little more confusing when you add 7 years of grad school onto the end of that, but the attitude doesn’t go away.  And, third, for a long time I didn’t know if I would be staying here or moving on to some other new place.  For that reason, I made very few moves to put down roots.

Now that it looks like I’ll be living here for at least the next four years, but very likely for much longer than that, I feel like I should embrace being a Californian.  Maybe this will sound weird, but I’m not very good at embedding myself in a location.  My favorite things to do?  Read, write, blog, watch TV, listen to music . . . all of which I can pretty much carry on doing in exactly the same way no matter where I am.  Exploring new places, trying new restaurants, and really experiencing a place are all things out of the ordinary for me.  (This is why I suck at vacation.)  And, for how much attention I pay to politics, I really know nothing about what’s happening locally.  When people ask me what it’s like to have Arnold Schwarzenegger for a governor, I have nothing to say, so I just break into my story about having a big crush on him in the Terminator days.

The reason I want to become more embedded here is not just so I’ll have something to say when someone asks for a restaurant recommendation, but because, shockingly enough, I really like it here in California.  Much more than I ever thought I would.  It’s so many different things at one time.  I love especially my small city with all its colleges.  And it should not come as a surprise to remember that you live in the place you do!

All of this reminds me of a quote from How I Met Your Mother where pretentious college freshman-aged Ted says, “My parents live in Ohio.  I live in the moment.”

Answers to Questions You Might Have

• No, I didn’t buy the socks.
• Yes, I do sometimes wear socks, but very rarely and mostly only when I workout.  This became apparent to me when I did 3 weeks worth of laundry and I only had two pairs of socks to put away.
• No, it isn’t always sunny in Southern California (but it is in Philadelphia!).  Just most of the time.  Growing up in Western Washington, I always hated hearing people say that it rains constantly in Seattle.  I had to be the snotty girl going, “It doesn’t rain all the time.”  But, then I moved away for a year and came back, and oh my gosh it rains all the time there! It’s just like that in Southern California with the sun.
• Yes, seven years of grad school.  It is ridiculous that I could be a medical doctor much faster than I can get a PhD in the humanities.
• Yes, I did really have a crush on Arnold.  I even wrote him a letter, which my dad promised he’d mail.