findingmyplaceagain - Tumblr blog

findingmyplaceagain · 8 years ago

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I feel strangely depressed, and it’s hard to figure out why. Last night I went on a date with someone I was initially really excited about - we’d met in person at an event with mutual friends, and she was a friend of a friend. I could tell she liked me by the way she looked at me throughout the conversation. When she asked me to go to the opera with her, I was really excited. I was excited to go on a date that was more than just hanging out at some crappy bar...it sounded romantic to get dressed up and go see some theater.

Well, the date tanked. I mean, she wasn’t ready to date and she kept talking about her ex and her myriad emotional issues the whole time. I felt like a really dressed-up therapist. And then she used me to process her emotions. Anyway - I know it has nothing to do with me, and I don’t take offense to it. I was just disappointed because I thought I’d found something that could be mutual, and it turned out to be a big farce. I felt pretty let down. Not quite sure why I built up that date and pinned so many hopes on it.

Since I’ve been in San Francisco, I’ve felt pretty lost. I’m not sure if it’s the generic feeling of “lostness” that comes with any major move, or if I am in fact really lost. It somehow feels like I need to recalibrate my life - re-figure out what means most to me and what I want. For some reason, as soon as I got back here, I started to question everything that previously made up who I was. Maybe it was the fact that being back here didn’t excite me nearly as much as I thought it would. Maybe it’s because San Francisco doesn’t feel like quite such a natural fit like I thought it would be. I spent so many hours making lists - deliberating, and analyzing - and I came up with the conclusion that I didn’t belong in New York - I belonged in San Francisco.

It was so logical. New York has no nature, and San Francisco has loads of it. New York is cold 6 months out of the year, and you can’t run outside. I love running. New York is intense and crazy, and I think most people would describe me as relaxed and easygoing. New York has less space, San Francisco has more. I like to cook. We get more kitchen for less $$ here. We actually stay healthy and cook more. People don’t encourage you to down donuts and eat pizza every day. It just seemed like such a natural fit. And when my job laid me and the entire department off, well - it felt like all signs were pointing back to San Francisco. So without a doubt in my mind, I packed my boxes. I “KNEW” it was the right thing to do. Or so I thought.

I knew I loved certain aspects of New York. I loved the intensity on some days - the feeling that ANYTHING could happen at any time. The feeling that SOMETHING was ALWAYS about to happen. You don’t get that here. You can plot out your days and your weeks pretty easily, and they come together quite predictably and nicely. It’s a good thing. Life is easy. You don’t plan on getting your groceries, only to find a 3 hour line winding around the block - and only to find they’re out of avocados, out of fruit, and you’re probably going to order something from Seamless tonight. No - in San Francisco, you tell yourself you’re going to go get your groceries at 2pm - you get there at 2, and you’re finished at 3 because there isn’t a line. And yes, they had your avocados. And now that you’re home, you have time to throw the laundry in, and even make dinner. It’s really nice. I LIKE this aspect of living in San Francisco.

But there’s something about living in New York - the way it throws you for a loop, throws a corkscrew at you and them some - there’s something about that that makes living exciting. You never know what’s around the corner. You never know what new place you’re going to find. You never know how your night is going to turn out - and sometimes, you get stuck inside the coolest restaurant ever with your best friend when you were both about to go home because it suddenly started hailing.

That doesn’t happen here. You can plan your day, and your day will most likely turn out as planned - mostly. Except when there’s heavy traffic. But even that only sets you back an hour or so, which is far less than New York sometimes sets you back as you wait on the subway platform for a train that’s delayed, trip over a block of ice and then discover that there’s a scottish parade going on and you’re not going to be able to eat at the restaurant you wanted to go to. So you adapt - you become flexible. You re-plan. Your day goes in a completely different direction, and sometimes, it’s better than you thought it would be. Sometimes, it’s awful - and sometimes your day is just one big mess of you trying to do things, and never really doing anything except running around. And sometimes, you give up, go to Duane Reade, buy an iced tea, and head back home saying to yourself, “Next time.”

That doesn’t happen in San Francisco. Which is GREAT. But - I don’t know why something about it is so unappealing. Just the fact that you can plot out your life - step by step for the most part, and watch it play out exactly just so. With so much control, you can’t help but wonder if you’re doing the right thing. Many people in San Francisco end up feeling complacent and then do something really drastic like move to Colombia or move to India and then join a yoga harem. (Obviously these are real life examples...) I can’t help but think that the reason for this is that the ease of living in this city breeds complacency. It’s calm - it’s relaxed - it’s always 50-75 degrees, with sunny days and foggy days. There’s no real thunderstorms. There’s rain here and there, but not too much. It’s mild mannered, easy to swallow, and offers you the same kind of stability you’d hope for in a long term relationship.

I used to think I wanted that in a place, but now I’m not so sure anymore. I used to say San Francisco is the city you marry, and New York is the city you date for a while, realize she’s actually a bitch and then come back home to San Francisco from. The truth is, New York is kind of a bitch. But she’s also exciting, a wild ride, and she bleeds color and life like no place else you’ve ever been (stateside, at least). She emulates what life is supposed to be and is - unpredictable, surprising, a cesspool of life and garbage and delicious eats. And sometimes rats. But there are so many lessons to be had in New York, and they’ve been written about a thousand times. I’m not sure NEW YORK is the place I want to be, but it certainly has taught me a thing or two about what I want - it has changed my perception on what I really think I need in life.

I left San Francisco knowing I felt complacent. I knew I wanted change. New York gave all that to me and more. I felt like I could come back to San Francisco a changed person, and enjoy it again. I thought New York would make me appreciate San Francisco that much more and in a new light. The thing is, I’ve changed. New York changed what I want. And now that I’m back, I’m not in love with San Francisco anymore. I feel like I’ve gone back to an old ex-lover, only to find all my feelings for her gone. Sometimes I love San Francisco. Nothing will ever change the way it feels when the sun is setting in the city, and nothing can detract from the beauty that is the views of the mountains and ocean from the tops of the hills. We are in one of the food capitals of the world, and there is entertainment, nature, dogs, and a laid-back, accepting culture that is admittedly wonderful. I just don’t understand why it’s not doing the same thing for me as it did when I was living here 2 years ago. Can you be “done” with a place?

I used to tell myself (in college) that 4 years was all it really took for me to be “done” with a place. At the end of 4 years in Santa Barbara, I wanted to (for lack of a better phrase) GTFO. I hated riding my bike down the same old paths, in the same old ways, in the same old weather. I was SO ready for a change. San Francisco brought that to me, and I loved it for 7 years. I was in a relationship for all of those 7 years - and I’m not sure if it was the relationship that brought me through the 4 year “itch” mark, but I do know that we constantly and consistently went out, discovered new things, and traveled. We found Mendocino, we found oyster shucking farms, we found favorite hiking trails and new friends. In my final year in SF before NY, I found the presidio, Battery to Bluffs cliffs, and fell in love with Ocean Beach. Now that I’m back, I’m rediscovering Land’s End, the beauty of those trails, Ocean beach, and new coffeeshops like “Home,” which has quickly become one of my favorites. It’s not that my life has become stagnant, nothing is ever the same. I have new faces (Lara, Tracey & friends, etc) but for some reason I’m hesitant to believe that I belong here.

What’s making me more confused is the fact that I’m well aware of the truth of the fact that you’re going to feel this way any time you move your life away and do something new. I hated New York for just about 6 months while I was there. There were days in New York I used to walk around in my bedroom waiting for my ex gf to get home, saying to myself “I’m miserable, I’m miserable.” I was hesitant to build a life out in New York. I didn’t feel like I belonged - there were only buildings, no real nature except for Central Park, and you had to take metro north for an hour to get to anything that halfway resembled something beautiful. But suddenly, something clicked and then I began to love those random days with Mercy that could turn into anything. I began to love seeing art exhibits around the city with Erika and finding new little cafes playing jazz. I liked going to Dunkin Donuts when it was hot to get an iced coffee and watch the world go by. I liked discovering new places - the constant feeling of - there is still so much in this city I haven’t seen yet, and I’m not sure I’ll ever discover the bottom of it. But I missed the outdoors, biking, cooking, and being healthy. I missed the way nature could be so easily integrated into your life on the west coast. I loved that all of my favorite outdoor places were so easy to reach in California. I guess I was just struggling with picturing a life out there. What would it look like? What kinds of new hobbies could I find to replace my love of the outdoors? I guess I found a few things - art, live music - live music everywhere. I think my favorite thing about New York is the music. I loved seeing artists on every corner. New York is a city that is alive and beats with creative energy. I see so much passion in those streets - from the street performers busking at 2am to the guys playing the violin on the corner of 93rd.

I LOVE that everyone (well, a lot of people) seem so alive. I loved seeing emotion in physical form everywhere. People feel their feelings, and you can see it on their faces. Sometimes you see people crying on the train. Sometimes you see people fighting. Sometimes you see the life in the eyes of the people who light up and smile when a performer is jamming in Penn Station. If nothing else, on your good days and your bad days in New York, you always felt like you were living. Sometimes it felt a little too fast. Sometimes it felt like if you stayed in New York, 15 years could pass at warp speed and you’d wonder where it all went, and what you did. New York can do that to you. New York happens to you. You don’t happen to New York. And sometimes, you’re not really sure what you got out of it other than many frustrating train rides, a whole lot of garbage, fancy food, and live music.

As far as accomplishments and direction goes, it’s hard to steer yourself too clearly out there. There’s so much noise and confusion obfuscating your path. There’s so much distraction. Sometimes it feels as though you enter a tunnel when you move to New York for the first time- only to emerge from the end of the tunnel 8 years later - older, (MAYBE wiser), with a whole lot less money and a bunch of drunken nights and donuts to show for it. Did you really DO anything? Who knows. You survived. You spent 2 hours in TJs line every time you got groceries. How many months of your life did you spend in that TJ’s line? How many months total did you spend stuck underground in the subway with your nose pressed up into some hairy dude’s sweaty pits? A few too many, you think to yourself. But all of this is speculation.

If anything, New York shakes you up and changes you. It was definitely the change I was looking for - and it taught me that the reason I felt complacent in San Francisco was that there wasn’t enough happening in my life. New York creates that change and that rough and tumble environment that makes you feel like you’re headed somewhere, even if you really aren’t doing much of anything. Perhaps it’s just a simulation of life when in fact you’re just a piece of popcorn being tumbled around in the popcorn cart.

In San Francisco, if you do nothing, you get nothing. Your life remains that blank slate. Whatever you get is whatever you put in. In New York, you can get by doing a whole lot of nothing, and feel like you’re doing something - simply because the landscape is constantly changing - it’s so vibrant and fascinating that your brain tricks you into believing you’re headed somewhere.

When you’re in San Francisco, you should have a goal. You should have a goal beyond your job. Yes - it’s great to have a job and do well, but you should also have hobbies. You should be writing. You should be publishing. You should be learning and playing music. You should be adding color and vibrance to your life. You can’t let it “happen” to you, because it won’t. You have to seek it out. You have to go to poetry readings. You have to create a project. You should create a blog - publish a book of short poems - plan epic travel - anything. You should not stand still, because if you do, your life is guaranteed to stand still as well. Am I up for this? Am I up for creating the framework around a vibrant life, or do I want it to happen to me? How much do I want my environment to contribute to what’s going on in my life, vs how much do I want to have to dream up and create? Am I go-gettery enough to create a life in San Francisco that matches the vibrance that i want my life to reflect?

I’m not sure...but I want to try. I have one year here, and the only chance I have at happiness is creating the life I desire to live. Bringing the energies and things I want in my life towards me - drawing it in. Can I do this? Can I create a life I love here? I believe I can, I believe in myself - but only time will tell how much the environment has a part to play in my happiness. If not, and if I’ve done the best I can to have goals, draw what I want towards me and accomplish what I want to do here - if I find that I’ve done all of this and I am still unhappy due to my environment, then perhaps I need to live in a place that puts some of that vibrance in front of me. Perhaps I need to be in a place where the color in your life is created in part by you, and in part by what surrounds you. That might create the play that happens between what you want, and what’s going on. That might create the “change” and “unpredictable�� nature I’m looking for in order to properly evolve as a person. It’s similar to working as an entrepreneur - SF is like this. You design your life, and it goes as designed. But you have to have the ambition and vision to create a goal that looks good and satisfies you. No one is going to tell you what to do. You MAKE your reality. Every bit, piece by piece - by your own hand. New York and places like that will give some of that to you. It’s like working at a corporation where you have some choice, and some space to create. New York I’d argue may be more of the extreme of giving everything to you - to the point that you have not enough room for thinking about what you want to create.

Perhaps a better place for me - if i know myself, is a place with a hybrid of both - a little give, a little create. Is that here? I don’t know. If it isn’t, maybe it’s Chicago, or maybe it’s vancouver. Or maybe it’s Brooklyn. Or is it that I don’t need more activity, and I just need a change? Do I just need things to not feel exactly the same as they did? I’m not sure. I’m not sure if San Francisco is too “chill” for me, and if the space to “create” is too high that I can’t live up to that challenge. I can’t fill my life with enough. If i find that I can’t fill my life with enough - then I will move somewhere that fills my life with a little more on its own. If If ind that I can, and that I’ve created what I want to have and that I can live sustainably and happily, then I can stay here.

Why am I unhappy?

1. Maybe I need to live in a place that has more activity (like NY, Chicago, or Brooklyn), so that there is less pressure to create and mold 100% of my life (more happens TO me) - there is more inspiration on the OUTSIDE that just COMES to you as opposed to what you have to purposefully DRAW in. Aka i’m slightly too lazy to draw literally everything fun in my life in, for instance by going to poetry readings, trying to publish a book of poetry, trying to learn this and that on the guitar and piano, trying to join this and that, learn this that and the other

2. I feel stagnant here - I’ve explored too much of SF already and know it like the back of my hand. I need to feel like I’m moving forward, and part of what makes me happy is discovering new things, feeling like there is more to learn and grow from. And it doesn’t have to be an active place like NY, it just needs to be different.

To find out, I’ll do this:

1. Since I’m already stuck in SF, do my best here. Live here for a year minimum (as the lease requires) and get a job, challenge myself and grow there. Draw things in. Learn new songs on the guitar. Learn new songs on the piano. Write more poetry. Join a writing class. Start rock climbing again. Go on a hike. Go camping. Travel. Discover a new hobby. Try a new class, or get back into an old hobby I let drop - (writing, music, publishing a poetry book, spoken word/music with your writing, music/read-out-loud-poetry blog, photography, astro-photography?, video editing? try a new class of some sort - woodworking? salsa dancing? painting? some form of art, maybe.) - I’d like to focus on WRITING, music, and art - primary interests. and fitness. cooking, etc

Explore: Writing, music, art, yoga & meditation, ecstatic dance, mindfulness, acroyoga, weird hippie shit, stuff that makes you feel uncomfortable, nature & outdoors/camping, live music, developing my career

-If this doesn’t bring me joy, and I feel like I still need more activity at the end of the year, move to Brooklyn, Chicago, or Denver. (or somewhere else if anything comes up.) Continue to discover myself and nurture my hobbies and draw towards me more of what I love.

-If this brings me joy and I feel satisfied, evaluate staying here and maybe move to a better location in SF.

On a side note, I think the majority of the reason I feel so unhappy right now is because I just moved from NY and I’m slightly traumatized from the change - I’m unsure if it was the right move, so this makes me anxious. I feel in limbo because I don’t have a job yet, and I feel frustrated with the process of trying to get a job. I miss my friends who I moved away from/who have moved away. I feel a little lost as to where I want to live, and that frustrates me. I don’t like not knowing what I want. I feel a little lonely because I have to rebuild some of my friend circle. I feel strange because I haven’t been in a super stable long term relationship or fallen in love since my last ex, and I wonder when it will happen again (or if it will, in SF, based on the slim pickings) and I want that in my life again, especially since I’m ready for it and I’d just like to have someone to love and travel with and come home to again.

so....in sum..

a) just moved / change adjustment

b) job hunt/frustration

c) social network needs to grow/has changed

d) uncertainty around where i want to live

e) i want a long term relationship, and i’m worried that i won’t find it

Answers:

a) will go away in time

b) will go away once i have a job

c) will continue to improve as i make friends out here and grow my circle

d) is going to be discovered with this new plan (above) - just relax in the in-between and see this as a transitional/discovery phase. yes, it’s uncomfortable, but that’s where most of the growth occurs. you can do this.

e) well...that’s a crapshoot. but live from abundance, practice law of attraction and know that positive energy begets positive energy. you are incredible and deserving of love, and it’s just a matter of time, but you’ll find it. just like you told tif - sometimes you’re going forward sometimes it seems like you’re going backwards and sometimes you feel like you’re lost in the woods, but just keep going, and one day you will find that you have arrived. trust yourself. trust your instincts. trust the process and know that it’s coming and you don’t have to worry.

Find peace in the in-between. Love yourself and try to find comfort in the discomfort - accept this in between, don’t fight it. Don’t try to “arrive” - you won’t arrive any sooner than you’re supposed to. It’ll just cause you pain. Don’t fight what IS, accept what IS. This is where you are right now. This is okay. This is where you’re supposed to be. You are on your journey. Keep on walking, and learn to roll with the punches. This is happiness. Keep walking, keep swimming, and remember to never stop APPRECIATING everything you have, and being full of gratitude for what you have today.

I am grateful for - my family, friends out here, the people who care about me, my savings account, the nice weather in SF, my skills, being able to live in a 1st world country, my health, the good food and coffeeshops in sf, the opportunities here, my fitness routine, and the fact that i can even afford an iphone and can look forward to travel. not everyone has this. I am free, I am not tied down. I am free to discover who I am, and what I want without the pressure of someone else right now. I am free to find my path. I am free to love myself. I am free to develop myself. I have time to develop myself.

I am grateful for my meandering path. I am grateful for discovery. I am grateful for change, for challenge, for the opportunity to grow.

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