up on the watershed

Saturday, June 27, 2009

i think

..I am ready to write again.

My goal, nay dream, for 2009 was to return to my hometown, purchase some property, and continue my quiet life filled with the company of family and friends and familiar sites. That dream is unlikely to be fulfilled this year and while I have spent the past several months preparing for that reality and feeling sad about it, I'm returning to this blog with a fresh perspective.

I've just recently returned from a week-long roadtrip through the South. I'd never spent time in Alabama, Missisippi, Louisiana or Arkansas and I can now say that I have (and could have spent several more weeks down there if it was financially prudent and I had the time). This was a roadtrip, loosely based on seeing important sites of the civil rights movement, that I'd been dreaming about for a very long time. I met some wonderful people along the way, was moved to tears more than once, marveled at the scenery, felt exceptionally privileged to be able to take the trip and met some longtime friends for the very first time.

Traveling is part of my identity, now, and while I was down South I realized that sometimes, travel is about relaxing or needing a change in scenery. The better kind of travel is the kind that broadens your perspective and your worldview. The best kind is the kind that changes your life. This was that kind of trip.

I have spent so long pining for Madison and making it my goal that it was startling to realize, again, there are other places in this country I could happily live. The hills of Birmingham hummed to me. Mid-town Memphis was a treat and a place where I felt at home.

I suppose I'm at a sort of crossroads in my life. I am still young enough to switch careers, to move cities, to get another degree, to start all over again. For a long time, I did not think that was what I wanted, since I've been moving every two years since I was 22 years old. When I leave here, I will have resided in the same place for the longest period of time since I was 18 years old. This is a terrible place for a single, vibrant, intellectually curious woman to spend her 20s and yet, I can't help but think I've been given this gift of not being able to leave, the gift of time to reconsider some things.

I'm not saying I've changed my mind about being in close proximity to my family. If anything, my desire to be closer to them is stronger than ever. I just now find it in conflict with my desired work (same story, different day) and some of my future aspirations (to finally open my foundation, to run a B&B, to be beholden not to institutions but individuals). And not to be all first-world-problems about this, but the pisser of the situation is that I could take off, now, and be financially okay for a good long while. That is a privilege I am never able to forget, particularly because it came at the price of losing my matriarchs. But there'd be nothing left and I haven't yet worked up the courage to even sketch out that risk, beholden as I, the self-styled iconoclast, am to social norms and institutions.