Roots – the next chapter

Old, unpublished post # __. I wrote this when trying to decide where to live.

I have a fair amount of wanderlust, moving abroad more than once, hopping on a plane whenever I can, working as a flight attendant, spending several years of my life as a nomad.

It sounds cooler than it feels. Often when I’m traveling, I feel like I don’t exist to anyone else. Nobody thinks about me when I’m not there and I’m never there. I’m never anywhere. For long.

I miss receiving spontaneous texts from people asking to hang out. It indicates a closeness. I’m thinking of you and want to see you, friend. I miss witnessing people’s every day lives and people witnessing my every day life. I miss existing.

And dating. I miss the idea of dating. Dating is hard and I’m very good at finding reasons not to try. Nomading and hopping around, forming shallow connections, gives me an easy how come for opting out of the dating game.

That’s clearly not the right answer though. I don’t think we’re meant to be alone. Humans are social creatures.

I need roots and steady relationships. A home base.

I spent too long nomading, maybe. Retirement rocked for about a year and a half, suitcasing (backpacking, but with a suitcase), sleeping, reading, writing, peering through the windows of life.

Now I keep wandering more because it seems too integral a part of who I am to put down and less because I want to. I’m a writer, a walker, and a wanderer. I can’t just cut out a W.

The nomad is the fun and interesting one. The other two Ws aren’t that impressive.

But it’s time. It’s time. The question now becomes where to settle?

The paradox of choice.

“I’ll never know, and neither will you of the life you don’t choose. We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore.”

Cheryl Strayed

One of the downsides of having control over your life is that you have so many options. So many forks in the road.

I’m having a hard time picking a place because I know that every life will be fun and exciting and good in its own way. I’ll enjoy them all. I just need to wave goodbye to the sister life and live the one I chose, focusing on what I like about it.

It’s wasteful to obsess over what I don’t have because there will always be something I don’t have. That’s basic opportunity cost. I was an econ major; I should know this stuff.

The answer is to revel in the fact that it was my choice. It doesn’t matter what life I pick as long as I feel like I had some sort of hand in it.

In 2017, I made a list of 14 cities and basically threw darts, asking the universe to decide where I would house-sit for a while.

In 2018, I culled my possible home bases list down to four cities and put too much thought into it.

I made pro/con lists and pictured the average day there. I spent a couple of months looking at Craigslist and Zillow, trying to find my new home. Of course I went a little nuts and tried to make different budgets. Here’s a sample.

Boring part starts here.

New York

Pros

1. I always look to my bucket list for guidance and New York City jumped out. NYC. You only need the initials. I love the idea of NYC, the city that’s always awake and ready to play. Bucket list item!

2. New York is fun and I have a lot of friends who live there.

3. Dating there seems like it could be fun. Maybe?

Cons

1. Sticker Shock. I’m not sure if you realize this, but New York is kind of expensive. I could make it work, finding roommates and living in hovels, scrimping on the rest of my life.

But scrimping doesn’t appeal to me. I like the idea of feeling abundance over scarcity. If I really wanted to tackle this bucket list item properly, I could find a job again.

I really, really, really, really, really like not working. Like a lot.

2. And I detest the weather in New York. Winters. The weather steers my mood more than should be possible. I think it’s the vitamin D.

Chicago

Pros

1. Chicago would be so ridiculously easy to set up and easy to make it feel like home. So, so easy. Ease is Chicago’s biggest selling point. I could be happy and settled in seconds flat.

2. And Chicago is an affordable city. I can live in Chicago with or without a roommate and without worry when the market decides to bear.

3. I know the city and have a lot of friends that live there still. My list of friends in Chicago outnumbers my list of friends in any other city.

4. Chicago also has my family there. I spent every single minute in India with some family and it was pretty great. It’s the people that you surround yourself with that matters more than I admit to myself and I have a ton of amazing family all over the Chicago-area whose company I genuinely enjoy.

Not living in Chicago is spitting in the face of the fortunes who have gifted me with the best blood. Nobody likes spit in their face. Especially not fortune.

Cons

1. I love Chicago, but I don’t actually like Chicago.

2. Chicago is cold and blustery. Winters and I don’t get along and I tend to become a hermit and stay in my jammies when I see snow on the ground. No, I don’t want to do anything.

3. I spent most of my adult life in Chicago and the city doesn’t feel like it fits. The only draw is my family and friends that live there.

San Francisco

Pros

1. Northern California is another place my bucket list suggested and another place where I like the idea more than the reality. But it would be a satisfying bucket list item to cross off nonetheless.

2. My sister lives in the bay area.

3. I have a few friends there.

4. The weather is better than Chicago and New York.

Cons

1. It’s California, so the weather is nice, but San Francisco is not as warm as you think it is. It always feels like it should be warmer.

2. Housing is very expensive. Even with a job, my rent would take up a lot of my resources.

3. Traffic is a pain. Visiting my sister across the bay would frustrate me.

Denver

Pros

1. The universe picked Denver for me in 2017 and I spent six months there that year. The universe knows things and I respect its opinion.

2. The sunshine is Denver’s biggest selling point, so insistent on its joy and eager to share.

3. There are no bugs.

4. The people are fit and happy. Outdoorsy. The men are buffer.

5. Denver is about the same affordability-wise as Chicago, but I think I could find a cheaper apartment in Denver.

6. I have a lot of friends in Denver.

6. Legal marijuana. I’ve told you about my depression. I’ve not told you that marijuana is the best antidepressant I’ve ever found. It shuts off the voice in my head that hates me and floods me with gratitude for feeling so calm and happy and present.

I know that everyone has their own cannabinoid receptors that react differently to marijuana, but mine love this plant.

And I like that it’s easily available in Denver. Yes, I know that San Francisco also resides in a legal marijuana state, but putting it here feels more like a big reveal.

Cons

1. Denver does have snow. Occasionally. It doesn’t get as much snow as Chicago or New York, but any non-zero number of days with snow, in my opinion, is too much.

…

So, I guess Denver?