I Think It's Time

I've learned a lot on my summer's venture. Mostly they are useless and demotivating kinds of lessons but lessons none the less. I reckon it's about time to head home. I'm tired, frustrated, and broke -which is what happens when a cowboy's yearnin's get ahead of his earnin's.

I'll wait here until someone can drive me home. Talk amongst yourselves. Come get me!

See I planned on my WorkAways but I'm just too afraid of getting too hot. I've been trying to hang around, waiting for the temperature drop but it's just not going anywhere and in the meantime I'm being unproductive and missing out on Sunday dinners. I reckon it's time for me to go home and make something of myself. What a drag.

It is nothing new to tell you that people paint pictures to be more grandiose than reality. Idealism, they call it. For me, the appeal of traveling isn't necessarily seeing the sights and trying the food. It's building another reality. It's imagining what my life would be like in this place. Maybe I'd make pastries here or be a sailor there. In this place I'd cook hot feasts all winter until the snow melted away or here, I could grow apple trees and have half a dozen dogs and a husband I picked out of a J. Crew catalogue.

I'm addicted to this life building and it affects my one real life. I like living in such a fashion that I can make anything happen at anytime but that can't last much longer and I'm very opposed to giving it up. Right now, I could move anywhere- for a job, for a person. I could choose to drop off the map, start a business, or go on vacation in Spain. I like and am comforted by this very free reality.

My mental painting of life out west involved lots of time at secret beaches with knowledgeable locals who just so happened to need a kayak instructor at their local scuba shop. Now, I could make this happen, but I realized you can't just pop into a place. In reality, it takes time to build a life, particularly the life you want and you have to commit to using your time to build friendships and making a place that feels like home. One of my realizations, and this really surprised me, is that I'm not willing to commit to anything that keeps me out of reach from my real home. I realized that I've been making up excuses to not apply for jobs I've found out here.

Now don't get me wrong. I don't get homesick. I'm not itching to move back in to my parent's house and truthfully, I don't really want to go back to Charleston. There's nothing for me to do there (AND all my friends are gone). But I want to be closer by. Home is where your people are. My people line the East Coast from Florida to Massachusetts and as much as I'd like to build one of my painting lives and think back fondly about my childhood in the South, I think I'd rather just be with my people. Fond memories are lovely but they're rotten company.