hello, good friend

Today is a new day, and somehow I have to muster up enough energy to pick up yesterday’s tasks where they left off. It’s a little like eating leftovers. I’m not wild about leftovers.

Me and Reality, we having a heart-to-heart. Like, “Why did you think it was a great idea to exist schedule-less for five weeks after moving to a new place? Did you really think you would spend those weeks organizing the apartment and exploring the city? Perhaps, if you had conversed with me then, you would’ve remembered that all of your friends work during the day (like Real People) and, yes, Cash Cab is always more appealing than MVA and grocery store errands.”

The truth is not, though, that I’m lazy. Or that I’m detoxing from wedding stress. (But, sure, if you’d like to give me that, I’ll take it.) The truth is that this new place intimidates me.

We take for granted the knowing of a place. We - I - take for granted the years of running the same roads, knowing the turns and the correct street names. I take for granted the acquired familiarity, the sensing of who’s where and why and for how long. I take for granted the running-into-So-and-So at the gas station, the check-out guy who knows my name, the old friend who gives me the movie ticket discount. I take for granted the memories associated with that restaurant booth, that party, that parking lot.

Sucks when you’re deep in the knowing of a place. Hate it that people know you, know your parents, know your history, claim to know your future. And that’s when City of CleanSlateFreshStart becomes appealing. A new place, a place yet unknown, a place of my own making. Perfect.

Except, once you arrive, you remember how many years (and how much monotony) knowing a place requires. Not every day feels like the opening montage of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Days feel boring. Errands get old. People don’t know you, and they might not try to. And a new apartment, no matter how ‘cute’ and ‘homey’, starts to look pretty old really quickly.

I haven’t lived in the same town my entire life. I’ve traveled some. I moved out of state for school, yes. This transition shouldn’t be so difficult, that’s what I tell myself. Yet I keep forgetting how utterly un-buffered this new place is. (I thought college was a blank slate? And a guided semester in Spain was freeing?) No, today I need to find a gas station (which, by the way, I haven’t noticed anywhere), shop for groceries, find a doctor’s office, cook dinner, mail packages, apply for a driver’s license, register my car, and find a dry cleaner. Boring, monotonous, necessary things. Things that, back home, would require two hours - max - of my day. (You just jump in the car and go, right?) Here, they require tremendous effort, a lot of gasoline, and some impossible quantity of patience.