“Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success, that is the way great spiritual giants are produced.”
It has been a year since our departure from the sunshine state. 365 days since our second cross country road trip in less than a year. We made our decision to move back to PA just two weeks before we actually left. This gave us two weeks to: find a subletter to take over the final 10 months of our lease, pack all of our belongings, rent a trailer/attach a hitch to our car, find arrangements back in PA to return to (job, shelter, etc.), and a million and one other details you have to incur during a trip that involves picking up two lives and transplanting them 3,000 miles across the country.
During those two weeks, we also resigned from our jobs. Rob held a position as a design/architect with a small firm only a few blocks from our house. He applied for this position before we even set foot in CA, and he was interviewed (by chance) during a 2 day planning trip we had scheduled in CA a month prior to moving. In this position, Rob was designing multi-million dollar projects and homes. He was also building models for design work featured in Dwell magazine.
I held a position in a "non-profit" (let's talk about those quotes someday when you are interested) as a national campaign coordinator in Beverly Hills. It was a job I got my first interview for only days after making the move to CA. The position included running a women's rights campaign in partnership with women's groups on college campuses nationwide. Working for a non-profit which also owned Ms magazine, I was largely responsible for doing mass amounts of research and article critique on issues related to my campaign. I also put my grad school macro research courses to good use by compiling two extensive research projects. One of which was breaking new ground in research related to college women's access to birth control options on campus and another of which has been used by law enforcement agencies and women's health organizations worldwide (ahem).
When I put in my two week's notice, the president and founder of the non-profit I was working for (who just happened to have flown in from Washinton, D.C. for a small stint in CA), said to me "Only someone your age would leave this type of job, in this economy, to move back to something you aren't even sure exists anymore."
And yet, there we were two weeks later ... driving our car, pulling a trailer with all of our belongings back across the country with no apartment secured or job opportunities on the horizon.
I look back on those two weeks and have a lot of mixed emotions. I remember the rawness I felt, the desperation, the depression. I was in the land of sunshine and felt like my mind was scattered with rain soaked clouds.
I have always felt that I am someone who is driven to achieve whatever I set my mind to. My determination has helped me achieve many worldly goals that would dub me "successful". I felt like our life in CA was the culmination of years upon years of busting our asses to get through high school, attend college, and start careers we were passionate about. And damn, I was proud of us. Still am.
So here we sit a year later, back in the city I grew up in ... the city I always wanted to leave. In a county I refused to assimilate into. And I am blissed out.
My priorities have changed. My expectations for my life have shifted dramatically. My definition of success has been revisited and reworked. I am embracing my belief that my body and the territory it inhabits are fluid by nature. The only boundaries I must live by are those that I create in my mind. I feel the strongest in my weakest, most vulnerable moments. And I love the place I am in.
I am a server with a master's degree. I left a "dream job" in Beverly Hills to work in a restaurant in Lancaster city. I live in the same conservative, religious county I ran from after realizing the liberal, spiritually awakened city I ran to isn't what "makes" me. I moved back in with my parents for a month after living on my own for years. And the pressure to explain why or how or who I have become was intense.
But I am here. I am present. I see the power in not putting myself in a box. Because I am who I have been all along. I am determined, I am dedicated, I am destined to do great things.
But I am also who I never thought I would be. And that is beautiful too.
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