Moving halfway across the country was easily one of the hardest things I've done in my life. It was harder even than moving across the ocean, because that semester abroad in Italy had an expiration date, whereas uprooting from Vermont is an indefinite experiment. I'm sure many people who've moved significant distances from their homes for multiple years would tell you the same thing. Where I'm from, we're an oddity, because people don't tend to leave. In many ways, I can't fault them. Vermont can be an idyllic, beautiful, wild place to live, and while I can miss it, I don't regret leaving. I moved for a couple different reasons-- one, for a change of scenery; two, to be somewhere where I could actually make a living; three, to be closer to extended and aging family members. Whatever the reasons, moving thousands of miles away from home has both made me and broke me in ways I never could have imagined when I set out. I came out here with a few thousand dollars in cash to my name, a three month sublet with no bedroom door, and no job prospects. In hindsight, I've done incredibly well for myself. On the good days, I revel in the fact I'm making the same sort of money my mother does, and I've only been in the corporate workplace 2 years compared to her 30. It's allowed me to do things like rent my own gem of an apartment and say yes to great experiences that I wouldn't be able to on a lesser income. I love the fact that I live in a city with a thriving cultural scene and on any given night of the week, can do anything from go to a museum to catch a big-name concert or go to a zoo or one of three different professional sports games. I love knowing that my family here can depend on me the way I used to depend on them. On the bad days, the feeling of loneliness that comes from leaving nearly all your close friends and immediate family behind is suffocating, especially in the Midwest where no one born here ever seems to leave their home state and is constantly surrounded by a tight group of friends and family and (sorry guys,) are not the best about letting new people in. To my MN friends who are constant, or as constant as their own life schedules allow, know that your love and time are incredibly precious to me, and that you're what make it worth it. Making friends as an adult is hard. Being an outsider is harder still. I am alone often, and many times not by choice. Can I move back home? No. Vermont simply does not have an economy that either offers or supports my line of work. Would I WANT to move back home? No, again. After spending the better part of 23 years in one place, I firmly believe it is possible to overstay your welcome. Some big fish will never be comfortable in small ponds. I am by nature a rolling stone, and this stone ain't done rolling yet. Minneapolis will not be my last stop, and this is neither the first nor the last time that I'll struggle with these feelings of out-of-place-ness and alienation. That's the world for you. It's big, it's weird, and at the end of the day, most of us are in it alone, fumbling around in the dark and trying to make a go of things. If you're considering moving away from your childhood home, even in the depths of the loneliest and most doubt-filled night, I would still tell you to do it. Do it if you know yourself; do it if you're okay with being alone with yourself; do it if you need change in whatever form it comes to you in. Do it for the person it will make you become, and do it for the people you will meet. Do it so that you don't become sedentary and wonder what your life could have been if you had been willing to take those blind leaps. Do it so that you don't make the sort of regrets people who pigeonhole themselves into a particular life inevitably find themselves paying for. Do it so that when you DO come across the place, person, or thing you want to commit yourself to for the rest of your life, you know it in a way that you have never known before, because you have known many other things enough to be able to choose for yourself what it is you want and need. And once you've found whatever it is that you're looking for as you wander, don't forget to open yourself up to the other wanderers still searching for that same thing as they pass through your life, so that even temporarily, they might find a little bit of home in you. If you needed that push, I hope you've found it.
