I Got The Keys

I’ve always had a knack for loving non-human things.

Whether it was Maddy The Cat (#MTC), the rings I wear every single day, the now 10-weeks-clean chair in my room, or the playlists on my Spotify account, it’s safe to say that I’ll dive head first into a romance with anything that can’t talk back to me. Normal, right? So, it comes as no surprise that the current LOML (love of my life) is a 2-door, navy blue with a white racing stripe (Go State) Honda civic named Rhonda (…the Honda. You get it.)

She sounds like a spaceship when you accelerate. She boasts a reputably massive stack of mostly unlabeled mix CD’s. She’s really good at continuing onward even when the gas light has been on for a few too many miles. She accessorizes well with tassels and holiday-specific Snoopy paraphernalia. And despite my mother judging and telling 18-year-old me that a 2-door car was impractical because “what about the [proverbial, future-forecasting, OMG don’t bring this up to a college freshman!!!!] baby seat,” Rhonda and I have had a great 8.5 years together.

We’ve made trips to and from Penn State and Northern Virginia, across the state of Pennsylvania, up and down the east coast, and a few million places in between. She’s been the champion of delivering hungover undergrads to and from their homes, she’s helped raise money for kids and families battling pediatric cancer, she’s been the true plus 1 to countless weddings, and thankfully she hasn’t blown a speaker yet. Willing to overlook the dead batteries (which were my fault, eek) in lieu of that last fact. Rock on, Rhonda.

Not to mention everywhere we’ve gone since rolling into SF. Different post, different day.

Rhonda is really the gift that keeps on giving (except I bought her? That’s not a gift). The car that keeps on driving, if you will. But 467 words about a car and what am I really saying? That it’s damn hard to explain what it was like to pack up and scoot across the country, and even harder to explain how things have been since then! Let a girl have some literary, longwinded space, geeze.

It’s been a full year in SF and I still haven’t quite figured out how to not cringe when someone asks the question “what made you move here?” as though it’s so simple to explain in 60 seconds or less to a random person just trying to make conversation. I think this question is my equivalent of couples getting asked “when are you getting married?” or newlyweds getting asked “when’s the baby coming?!” or master’s graduates getting asked “heading right into your PhD, right??”

To everyone who received a short and snarky “because I wanted to” in response, I’m not sorry. I’m not sure what you expected… but I’m not sorry. At the root, it’s true: I wanted to, and so I did. Novel idea that people sometimes do what they want to do. What some people know (but others don’t) is that I wanted to move away from DC beginning in the fall of 2013. A lot of scheming, plotting, and plan-changing can happen in 3 years, folks. I’ll tell ya that much. And unsurprisingly, the decision of where to move was not going to be an easy one.

I wasn’t going to move somewhere because a job told me, or a guy told me, or my mom told me, or an article in a magazine told me. I wasn’t going to move because a place was more affordable, I wasn’t going somewhere because my friends were there. And I most certainly wasn’t going to limit myself to the US.

Since I had a few things tethering me to DC for a foreseeable future (grad school, a sick grandmother, and an old cat — normal shit), I initiated a “traveling smartly” plan, where I started slowly ticking places off my adventure list with the main goal of each trip being to answer the internal “would I want to live here someday?” question. Except Peru. I was 98% sure I didn’t want to live in Peru.

For the first few years I was confident my next home would be abroad though, with Brussels taking the lead for a while. From there (once I decided I wasn’t going to create world peace while working at NATO), Seattle took over the top spot, and remained there for a solid year as I finished up my master’s and watched a #goals coworker move there with her husband. In a lesson of not putting all of your chips in one basket (is it chips or chicks… why would you put chips in a basket. Is this a phrase about gambling? This doesn’t make sense), I went from all-in on Seattle in May 2015 to all-out in a matter of weeks after a follow up trip to the Emerald City. Why? Because when you’re making decisions for yourself you can pull the plug at any time with minimal consequences and explanation, which is a beautiful reality that I welcomingly live in sometimes.

Seemingly directionless, antsy at work, unenthused by what DC had to offer in a number of ways, I threw a band aid on the problem by moving out of my Arlington apartment with my perfect roommates of 3 years and signing up for a year of city living with the also perfect Kara. Wondering if this would satiate the need for a big move, the new environment was a welcomed change, but most certainly not a long-term answer to life’s bigger, ever-present questions that seem to constantly nag at an ENFP such as myself.

But if I had to point to a time that made me believe in magic, people, and the value of collecting your chips to play later (is this analogy working? I really can’t tell), nothing would surpass the following 12 months. Which sounds like an eternity, but each day was necessary, special, and full of both noticeable and subtle purpose.

I met the best people — the best in terms of personality, the best in terms of timing, the best in terms of they were actually the worst but also taught me a lot of greatness by proxy so it evens out.

The beginning of this year-long period started off with a pretty mellow rut. I don’t know if anyone else would agree with that who was around at the time, but I know it was a Ruuuuuut. Capital R. Dramatically drawn out. Not great. I kept trying things, poking at possibilities for moving life forward, but nothing seemed to really stick or make sense. I’m trying to describe all of this without being too hippie and using the word “vibe,” but truthfully the vibes were just up in the air. I was growing and changing but I wasn’t feeling any more confident about what was next, and for that I felt like a failure. Like I was settling. Like I wasn’t trying hard enough. I had envisioned this gigantic, vibrant life post-grad school and instead of metaphorically prancing around wearing a couture Oscar De La Renta gown, it felt like I was sitting on a gross curb somewhere wearing a plain t shirt and jeans I found on sale at Kohl’s. Super lame.

Something that I think I started doing right during this time was living with a little more vulnerability. A few times in my life already I had made and executed completely on a well-thought-out plan and I had come up disappointed almost every time (who’s type A? Oh me, of course). I wasn’t signing up for that again, and I was subconsciously wise enough to be patient with myself, open with others, and curious enough to question everyone and everything. I reconnected with my values, the first being integrity and the second being independence. I had some fun (as much as you can while working a full and part time job). I kept traveling alone and with friends. And just as I was starting to pick at the scab that my life was becoming, some massive shifts happened.

The highest of highs and lowest of lows I’ve experienced to-date happened in February 2016, and by March 1st a lot of answers had fallen slowly, yet magically into place. That day I randomly decided to walk home. Looking back, the whole experience seems so ephemeral yet full of magnitude. I left the office with an average amount of disappointment and furrowed-browness (real phrase despite the squiggly red line suggesting otherwise) that one can obtain on any given Monday, and by the time I made it back to 1330 Irving St. I was ready to announce, nearly in tears, to Kara that it was “time for me to leave.” She agreed, because she knew and it was. And suddenly I felt SO. MUCH. BETTER.

What seemed out of reach, hazy, undefinable for months, was suddenly taking shape right before my eyes without a ton of information. Despite that, a new action plan was formed within days. The next few months felt completely out of my hands, yet I was the one making things happen. It was as though I had been practicing for years for this big game and now was able to execute everything in my sleep.

As someone who is fiercely independent, unwaveringly stubborn (cough bratty), and the kind of person who annoyingly will take off at a sprint pace when overly eager about getting something done, I’m surprised that everything worked out as flawlessly as it did (I mentioned the magic already, yes? Right). In part, this happened because I was able to ask for help (at least 50 times), I wasn’t quick to make a decision and overcommit to it (like usual), and I was willing to listen to advice and signs (is that too hippie? Oh well).

The result was three-fold. I knew I needed:

San Francisco, out of the places on my list, fit like a mismatched sock based on the factors in consideration. And for those unfamiliar with my footwear trends, I can confirm 10/10 that means it was also perfect.

I had no idea what to expect after this kind of upheaval, but I knew I was doing the right thing (for me), I was prepared for whatever happened next, and I was ready to find comfort in the unknown. Truthfully, the first 4–6 months felt like I was straddling a breakup with or the death of the person I was for 27 years. Was she someone worth salvaging any part of? Did we want to remain friends?

To give yourself a type of permission that’s needed to blank slate the shit out of your own life…that’s not something another person can give you. Or a new address. It’s an internal decision you make, to think through who you are and what’s made you that way so far. There’s no one, no contract saying that anything about life is permanent, and that includes who you are, just like it includes where you are.

For me I knew at a foundational level, the move was about a massive personal culture shift. I wanted to stop chasing labels and people, and see what would come to me if I focused inward on building my own world, day by day. Every good, self-respecting blog post deserves a Kevin Costner shout out (le swoon), so here we are…

I thought, most importantly, if I could get out of my own way I’d be able to finally try all these real and intangible things I’ve never had time, space, or courage to try. Things like going home at a normal hour instead of filling the days with an unforgiving hustle (seriously, getting home before 10pm was rarely a reality), learning to play the piano, falling in love, making decisions on the fly, feeling 100% present wherever I am. Things that for a slew of big and small reasons I avoided because I always had an excuse.

As the days, weeks, and months have gone by, I’ve watched myself redefine what “living with integrity” means to me. Honestly, I thought I was doing it already. I thought I was holding myself accountable. I thought I was living above the line of people who do things for the wrong reasons. But what I wasn’t doing was giving myself flexibility to change the picture and who/what was in it. And I definitely wasn’t feeling brave enough to pivot, take risks, or do something because I wanted to, not because of what I thought it would do for me later.

Who knows what’s next (obviously I have a few ideas — old habits die hard), but I do know I’m more confident and better suited to live based on personal values rather than external milestones. I’m more tuned in to the importance of balancing calculated plans and expectations with a healthy dose of reality and disappointment. And lastly, I’ve grown to be amused by the ways in which I manage to sabotage myself rather than afraid of the frustration that comes from failure.

Will I stay on a traditional path, will I sell out, will I blow it all up and become a pizza maker/bar tender in a beach/mountain town? Will I have the guts to do what I love and want to do (I hope so)? Will I fall back and do things I’m not proud of (absolutely, hello humanity)?

The answers are still up in the air, and the list of things to try is ever growing. But what I care most about at this point is that I remain receptive to living rather than numb to feeling, and that I feel proud about what I do, who I am, where I’m going, and how I get there enough to write another 2,700 words or so.

Give or take.

Watching: Following the Scrubs theme from last fall…Friends and Game of Thrones from episode 1 all the way through. If you’re not tag-teaming two of the most popular series in our culture you’re not trying hard enough.

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