#2: If you're reading this right now
I've been in a car for the past 14 hours.
It’s a compact car.
And there are 2 humans, 7 plants, 3 candles, an embarrassing amount of clothes and shoes and books and anywhere from 15-30 rocks (most of them small in stature) that I am somehow less embarrassed about having packed vs. the number of T-shirts that I did.
Now that I’ve set that alarming scene – I’m going to take a quick detour (ha! CAR humor!).
I want to say that I feel so earnestly happy and moved to have gotten very nice responses from the first of these attempts at KYC.
A couple of choice curds (like cheese or whey) to chew on that arose from #1 :
The extremely sage insight that: focusing on something besides running doesn’t necessarily fill the exact void that not-running leaves. Annie brought this up to me and she’s so right that a void can really only truly be filled by the thing that was there to begin with. But, I also think it’s nice to imagine a bunch of other strangely shaped interests combining to help plug up the hole until running comes back. Much like how a bunch of rocks and T-shirts can form a somewhat-human shaped space to take up an entire backseat of a car. But anyway….
Hard-to-refute proof that you can care about getting better at something and it is still a hobby: offered from multiple people! Seth raised the point that a hobby is something you enjoy doing, and that he enjoys running – soooo, by transitive factor, etc etc. But, really, I get his point that getting better at something usually adds to the enjoyment of it, regardless of what it is. And Dave weighed in that cooking and piano are both things he cares about getting better at, yet doesn’t spend a ton of time on. Which I admit sounds very hobby-ish. I guess the ball is in Paul’s corner to defend his stance.
Detour over. Back to the topic at hand this week.
Moving.
I moved out of San Francisco this weekend. Only 16 months after moving there in the first place! It’s the exact situation I explicitly knew and said (out loud even! to real people! so much for manifestation) that I wanted to avoid when moving in to SF. I’ve moved every year since 2012 with the exception of 2017. So I was ready to try out staying put for maybe three or four whole years. But - you know what they say about best-laid or even okay-laid plans.
This current move is different. It wouldn’t have happened without coronavirus and/or remote work. So, it’s hard to feel like it’s entirely my own choice. But as I’ve entertained that thought another one screams over from the other side of my brain that: au contraire, mon frere! It’s entirely my choice, because I have the privilege to be able to consider moving. I’m an employee whose essentialness does not depend upon being in a specific location, in-person. I have places to move to with family and friends and community. I can afford to move.
I know so many people who are or have already moved. It feels like a mass exodus. The other day, a coworker used the phrase “brain drain” to describe San Francisco right now. I’d never heard that term before. But it’s about how in a post-industrial world, educated people are moving to states with more lucrative job offers. People moving out of those places obviously affects their previous home states and cities and towns. And that affects the people who live in those places who don’t have the option to move – whether they’d want to or not.
I think maybe subconsciously, moving has always felt like giving up on a place to me. Moving is an acknowledgment that you’re not entirely happy, that something is not working in your life or it could potentially work better. Which is maybe why it feels now – and has when I’ve moved in the past – like I don’t necessarily, entirely have a choice. The choice is made by the context, by the situation. I’m talking in circles a bit here, but I think my professor Nicole Walker’s essay “(Who Gets to) Just Up and Move” gets at what I’m feeling at the very end. In the last paragraph she says:
Maybe it’s time to think about moving. Maybe we’ll take some of these heartier plants of mine and we’ll set down roots somewhere more temperate. Somewhere that we will tell ourselves we chose to go, even though we were, in fact, forced to leave.
And one last note is that I realize this still doesn’t recognize in the way it should that so many people don’t even have the option to be “forced to leave.” Which is part of the reason why I feel compelled to embrace the chance to be happier, to make the most of the cards COVID is dealing. One of the sensations I’ve felt most in the past few months is that life is on an extended hold and we’re treading water, waiting for it to pick back up. But that’s not accurate. Life keeps going. And moving feels like one way to move forward with it instead of waiting it out.
I’m headed back east by the way (in a round-about, road-trippy way) and gosh I am almost nauseous with excitement at the thought of seeing family and friends and fall leaves changing colors and dropping onto the ground.
Have you moved? Thinking about it?
If there’s one thing I’ve done more of than move in the past few years it is think and talk about it, so I’m here to do just that. lmk.
This is certainly not enough of a transition to 10 Things, but well I’m gonna just head there anyway.
That’s right. 10 of em. Full disclosure: I was far too frantic and spastic and scattered and distracted by material, physical objects and cleaning and sorting and packing them this week to pay the Internet close attention. So these ten things might not be as widely applicable or even too interesting, but heck – I’ll share em anyway.
1 - We’re going to start with a bang. Right off the bat: a cat. A perfect one. Don’t know who they are, but really wish that I did.
2 - My last acai bowl from Cafe Reveille in the Lower Haight for a while. It was sad but still tasted like perfection.
3 - Ugh. I know I said I felt weird recommending This American Life, but yet here I am doing it again. BUT this one segment of this episode was so so GOOD. The best segment I’ve heard in 2020. It blew my mind to think about how time is not equally accessible to everyone. I don’t think I’d ever really thought about this way before. Please at least read the transcript of Time Bandit about Jerome Ellis and his work. (It’s “act one”, but the second bit, after an extended intro.)
4 - Gregg Popovich saying something very nice and frankly emotional and inspiring in a weird, dead-pan kind of way after the Spurs broke their 22-year post-season streak.
5 - I signed up for this exciting relay Womxn Run the Vote, which will allow walking/biking/running/other activity types to count toward your group’s mileage! I can’t wait for it to start.
6 - Air conditioning. Our car’s air conditioning broke last summer, but we got it fixed prior to leaving for a drive through California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and Texas at times when they’ll be peak heat and probably humidity. You really can’t appreciate something like air conditioning while driving until you go without it for multiple trips in 90+ degree heat.
7 - This speech that I read and thought: it would be really nice to hear from an actual President right now.
8 - A prolotherapy injection. I’m not a doctor so I don’t really know what this is, but one of mine recommended that I get one and there was one slot left right before we were planning to leave, so I did. I’ll let you know if/how it helps.
9 - Oceans 11-13. Not in that order. Started with Oceans 12 then went to Oceans 13 then back to 11. During a time when things feel bleak and bad it was nice to turn off your brain and watch something dumb but big and fun and get a little lost in it.
10 - On repeat. Jk not on repeat. But on the speakers of our car as we drive. I’m finishing this up from the car now. HELP. jk jk everything is fine. this is fine.
excited to be on solid ground and sleep for a very long time in colorado soon,
Jeanne
Safe travels Jeanne!