Eight Months and Counting...
...and, I'm takin' it one day at a time...

I had to do it. I'm talking about the relocation I underwent last December. I've been down here on the South Coast for over eight months now. I think of my former town from time to time; it is still part of me. It's just that I had to get away. I figured, "well, if I don't leave at this point in my life, I probably never will". I am not well-traveled; I haven't been a whole lot of places in my life; maybe "I tend to lean on old familiar ways", as Paul Simon once sang. And, yep, I guess I am "still crazy after all these years". I think it was a case of being in the same old place day after day, and even tho the lake and surrounding mountains up there are eternally beautiful, I had seen that same lake and mountains for over 40 years of my life. And, for a lot of reasons, my hometown just didn't feel like my hometown any more.

A major reason I left was because I wanted to try and start over, and it's hard to do that if you've been in the same place all your life. Yes, I have some bad memories that I am trying to outrun, and that's part of the reason, too. Have I outrun them? Not totally. Am I where I want to be, mentally, at this point in my life? Again, not totally. And I'll admit there are times when I end up missing the town in which I used to live. But that place had changed and grown so much, I hadn't really felt at home for a few years prior to my move; I would've been depressed out of my mind by now had I stayed there. And tho I made some friends on the internet up there, it seemed that, as the years went by, I actually knew less and less people there, as people in my life had either moved away or passed on, and in a town in which I'd spent over 40 years of my life, I was feeling more and more disconnected as time went on. And maybe I was just a little bit afraid of dying there without having lived somewhere else first.

Still another reason I left was because of the mushrooming growth in that area; it's on the Interstate, which we all know is a conduit for rapid growth as those from the big cities try to escape their own personal hells by staking out their claims in an area formerly known for peace and tranquility; sadly, there's not a lot of that up there anymore. The crowds got bigger, people got noisier, the roads became more congested, drivers got ruder, as wide open spaces were becoming overtaken by malls and houses and business buildings and condos and offices and cul-de-sacs and real-estate development and growth, growth, and more growth. I recall that once while driving around in the town I had lived in all my life, I felt a kind of despair creeping in, a little bit of panic, that everything was just going (and growing) faster, faster, faster all the time and here I was, the same old person, having increasing difficulty trying to keep up with it all.

So I'm down here now. And, I still have my good days and bad days. Moving here hasn't been the immediate 'answer' that I'd hoped. But, now that I'm in a new place, there are less things that trigger bad memories for me down here, again, because this place is new to me. I will be the first one to admit that I have royally screwed up several times in my life, and I'm trying to change that. Because, sometimes I have not been a very good person. And so, I am starting over. Trying to, anyway. And I am convinced that any beneficial changes within me will be hard-fought; this 'project' called 'me' is going to take some time. How much time? Maybe 6 months, maybe the rest of my life. One of my favorite people, a lady named Cis (one of my 3 faithful readers) told me that 'it usually takes a couple of years to totally feel at home in a new place'. I think she's right. Sometimes I don't feel at home here. And, sometimes I do. Sometimes I think it wasn't right for me to leave; other times, I am totally and honestly glad I came down here.
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This pseudo-explanation of my relocation will just have to do for the forseeable future, and has been written especially for my huckleberry-picking friends. Take care up there, you guys.