geography's a bitch

i need to get the hell out of town. i am so tired of this place. i think a part of me is still misunderstood and misjudged while i'm in the northwest, really. while we are all human and north american, etc., etc., the culture here is really quite different from southern california, say. and southern california, while i cringe for shame as i write it, is the place i feel most at home. that is not to say that i love or respect it the most, but that i feel like that is where i belong. i just grew attached to it as i was growing up, that silly culture played a not so small part in my personality development that will never change.

i'd like to outline exactly what it different about the cultures here and in california, and what exactly is missing that i feel like i need, but i can't. it's so tenuous in my mind, i only feel what i think i know, and only that about half the time. part of it's got to be the sun. that's no small thing. but culturally, that little part of me that has no home here jumps up a little inside me when i watch a scene filmed in orange county or san diego or something. i don't know what that is.

the northwest is great. i love portland. portland is an amazing city and i would love to live here and raise my kids here and get old here and all that. i love that people are so nice and there is so much to do all around me at any given time. i can walk to a concert downtown if i want. i can ride my bike up and around mount tabor to watch the sunset. i can spend every day for the rest of my life just looking for and finding new and interesting places to drink coffee and chat with all sorts of people. i can get lost in a four story bookstore that spans a city block, then read my new and used books in one of the said coffee shops. i can drive two hours through the columbia river gorge and incredible fields and forests to mount hood for great snowboarding, then make an equally beautiful drive in the other direction to the coast. there are so many interesting and engaging people within my age bracket. on the whole, the interests and opinions i have that alienated me in palm springs are the interests and opinions that connect me to a large community of people in portland. i am free to think what i want, say what i want, do what i want, and be what i want without worrying how much further to the fringe i will be pushed. it is really easy to live here.

but there's that one little part of me that i feel nobody gets.

maybe i need to take a trip somewhere, find myself. maybe i'm not sick of portland at all, but sick of staying still for so long. why do i constantly need to change? why can't i settle down somewhere for five minutes without feeling restless? maybe i do need to move back closer to home. eck, but not palm springs.

a friend of mine asked me if i wanted to go with her to tibet for a month. this girl is not the sort of person i'd normally want to go on a trip like that with. "i need to explore the world and myself and greater meaning: i'll take her." there's like 8% of this girl that i even understand, much less connect with. but maybe she's the perfect person to go with because of that. i won't feel like we're taking a trip together as best buds, but that we're both in the same place and need neutral partners to travel with while we do our own individual searches. who knows. a month isn't all that long.

i asked for a week off in february "for sanity reasons". i always want a vacation where i don't go anywhere but just stay at home and not go to work every day. it will give me a chance to catch up i think. with my life. i have so much i want to think about and do, just little things like doctors appointments and reading books and cleaning under my bed and all that. i am so exhausted every day, all i can do when i get home is eat and watch tv shows. i never think about anything all the way through. i just start thinking about it, then get stressed out about how i don't have time or energy to really devote to thinking about it, then go to bed stressed out, having realized that i will never have the chance to really think about my life or anything that could create any change in my life because i am so tired from the day to day. i could potentially get stuck like this and keep working and working in the same job and doing the same things every day for years without changing, and not necessarily being happy in it, just because i don't have time to think. that is dangerous. hence the vacation. real vacations, the ones where you go places with palm trees and stuff, don't really give you the opportunity to evaluate your life all that much. they are really good for relaxing and having fun, but then they drop you off at your house and make you go to bed and have to wake up the next morning to the same life you had before your vacation. hopefully, this will be different. i don't intend to have copious amounts of fun and relaxation, although i do intend to sleep in every day. i just want to think about where my life is going. that and clean under my bed.