And so it goes, and so I go

Generally, I like to think of myself as a person with a pretty optimistic outlook.  I usually hope for the best and assume that things will work out.  Alas, I also like to believe that I have the clarity to recognize when something just isn’t working out.  Typically with me, clarity doesn’t filter in like precious rays of warm sunshine, but rather hits me like a speeding commuter bus.  Either way, I reckon it’s better to know than not to know.

I had been considering moving my blog for awhile now.  Nine years of acerbic one or two liners is probably enough.  No longer am I a depressed girl with a questionable haircut and even more questionable footwear choices making my way through that hippie/yuppie beacon on seven hills that is San Francisco.  No longer am I the wise-ass little indie rock fanatic haunting the dingier establishments on the east side of Los Angeles.  A lot has happened since I first started shouting at the internets, and so I think the time has come to alter the pitch of my yell.

Last night I found myself telling a friend that discovering what isn’t right is a decent step toward trying to ascertain what might work in the future.  I believe this in the most hearty of ways.  The speeding bus with the banner on the side saying “YOU HATE NEW YORK WHY DON’T YOU LEAVE ALREADY” has smacked right into me this week.  Inside the bus there sat many passengers, such fine folks as no matter how much you love your boyfriend it’s really not working out, just admit you cannot stand a crowd, and you are pretty much a friendless loser.

My rational mind knows that I am not pretty much a friendless loser.  I simply do not have many friends (save you, dear William) in this town and connecting with new people has been a difficult, exhausting, and fruitless task.  This behemoth metropolis leaves me feeling worn out and irritable.  It’s not for me.

And so it is that this coming Friday I will pack up my meager array of belongings and my mother will fly into JFK and we will rent a large SUV and westward bound we shall be.  When I first moved to California ten years and fifteen days ago, driving across Arizona at dusk was a blinding endeavor.  There is something very charming to me still about westward orientation.  In this case west is still east of the Mississippi and the ultimate destination is my ancestral home of Chicago.  In some respects it feels a bit disconcerting to be going home after all these years, and being squired there by my mother no less!  In other respects, it is the warm hug of familiarity that I have been missing these eight months in New York.  

It will be okay.  Soda with become pop.  Th will become D.  I will be frostbitten and windbitten.  Well, in about four months I will be frostbitten and windbitten.  I will drink lots of beer.  Cheaply.  At happy hour.  I will find for myself an adorable apartment and I will paint the walls robin’s egg blue.

In two months or so I am turning 28.  The corners of my eyes have tiny wrinkles that only I can see.  I like to look at them sometimes and think about 30.  I cannot wait to be 30.