I keep a journal, have written in it every day for 5 years. Most entries never get seen again, even by myself, but this one I reread and found both lovely and illustrative so here it is, written 6/22/20:
I’ve written about this before, now it’s different because it’s real, a move not a trial. In 5 days, I’ll be driving down highway 1. Away from a place I’ve called home for 4 yrs, towards one I will next.
LA’s been my planned next chapter for what feels like a while now. When you say something enough it starts to become a sound you make more than a sentence that means something. ‘I’m moving to LA’ I realize I separated myself from the reality of what that meant. I wasn’t ready when I first said it, there were things I still needed to see, to do, to finish in SF. I know that now and I’m grateful I took that time.
I don’t like endings, notorious for Irish goodbyes and unshut cabinet doors, I tend to finish things slowly, unnoticeably, a fade more than a close. I took the time to fade, slowly detach my identity from SF, begin turning towards who and where I was ready to be next. Now that next is now and I’m writing to learn how I feel about it.
SF, my city, I’ve never said that about anywhere else. A thought I can feel in my body when I think it and speak it, one that rests in a place in my chest, weighted with meaning and truth. My city. Maybe because so much of my self-narrative feels tied to this place and the time I’ve had here.
In four years, I’ve grown more than I could have anticipated that day in 2016 when I had my head out the window driving from SFO for the first time. I’ve pushed, adapted, opened and changed to someone that would be foreign to the me that landed here four years ago. I do believe people can change, but the change I experienced has felt like simply getting closer to my truth.
I believe we all have a core being that we seek to discover and actualize. That all internal work is striving towards figuring out what that is, and shedding layers to let it release and flow and be. In that foundational place we are integrated, whole. In these 4 years, I’ve had a lot of shedding, both self-directed and otherwise. I didn’t always welcome it. Sometimes it came from painful rejection, failure, disappointment, but it all taught me something that brought me closer to who I am.
I came here so wide-eyed. So hungry and eager to take in all the city had to show me. I was east coast to the bone. From a very conventional, stable upbringing in a small town, the values instilled in me were things like work hard, be kind, do well in school, study marketable skills and get a secure job along a proven path. Those were the pillars that held me steady and pointed me where to go. But for as long as I can remember, a questioning discontentment burned in peripherals, rooted in a defiance to the expectations set around me for that predictable, safe future. A discontentment that told me there’s more, let’s look for more, let’s go towards more. To different, novel, strange, precarious but big, meaningful. I felt it was out there then I got tastes through traveling, reading, watching and I knew it was.
It lit something in me, the itch became a burn I had to find it myself. I wouldn’t by staying where I was. California seemed to have it. I’d never been so it was an idea more than a conviction, a place that sat in my mind as one of beauty and boundless potential that flooded my dreams and kindled the fire that told me go.
I did and I was right. The first time I stepped foot in SF was with a suitcase and wide eyes looking at a new life. I was quickly magnetized. I saw a new way of being living working thinking that resonated more than I ever felt in Maryland. I saw a bar higher than I’d ever been exposed to. I had to reach it. I was used to being the bar, now it was high, far away. Closing the gap a little every day became an obsessive priority.
I worked so hard. I cared so much. Every minute had to feel like progress to better. At the time, I defined better pretty narrowly. Almost solely wrapped up in career and financial achievement. I learned though. Learned the value in human connection, candor, flow, the dance that is life—just a string of seconds lined up next to one another and the only one that ever really exists is the one you’re in now. Before, I lived in the future, always planning for the tomorrow, it left no time to relish in the now. Tomorrow me had expectations, milestones awaiting.
There’s a reason people call SF a transient city. People, at least in the SF world I know, come here for a reason and that reason is time-boxed. You feel it when you go places. Walking down Market st, squeezing on the 9 am MUNI, standing in line at Fidi’s Blue Bottle, looking in the SoMa startup offices, or people-watching at Dolores. Everyone’s here to get somewhere. There’s a rushed, weightless slipperiness to it. Like any person or thing you interact with could be gone tomorrow. People, businesses, they come, get what they need or don’t, and go. Everyone’s on a mission and that mission is internally-focused.
I value discipline more than most things, but what I grew to learn is the kind of discipline that feels good. I owe a lot to this place, but leaving feels exactly right. In LA, I see a life worth building and growing in, roots worth extending. Community, connection, lifestyle, being. Growing in a new way.
A consistent symbol in my life, or archetype as Carl Jung or Joseph Campbell would say, is an old, tall and deeply rooted tree. Maybe it means something, maybe my mind only tells me it does I’m not sure if it’d change the effect. When I was young I was either on one or under one, exploring the woods behind my house and making forts with my brother and the neighborhood boys or climbing any branch I could reach. My dad took us on hikes often, the blanket of green and bark, the vast quiet of a dense forest still feels like home. As I left the small town where I grew up, went out to find my own place in the world, I’ve kept the image and feeling with me. A tree. Rooted, grounded. Secure and stable where it stands but in the right conditions, upward growth that flourishes. The stabler the ground, the healthier the soil, the more it’s free to leave it.
I never felt ground in SF. Growth came despite that but after 4 years I’ve noticed it begin to wane, reach a peak potential to which current state is tied. It needs new nourishment, a more stable form, roots that can extend and rest.