My first real San Francisco blog

San Francisco. I'm not quite sure yet what I think of this fair city. In the nearly 2 months since I have moved, I have passed through most of the emotions you would expect. I've been excited about meeting people, seeing new areas, rebuilding my life. I've been horrified that I have to meet new friends, see new areas, rebuild my life. Sometimes I look around the bus and wonder what the hell I was thinking! I become annoyed wandering unfamiliar streets and wonder why I left something so familiar. But I'm here. I made the decision, a very difficult decision, to leave, to start over, to try again, and now I must follow through with it at least for a little while. A lot has happened in only 7 weeks, and I won't get into it all tonight. It's the 6th phase of my life really. I grew up in the same small town, college, Philly, Peace Corps, then Philly again. But Philly was different and I was different and I only really reconnected with one friend from before. That happens. Friendships die sometime. It's sad. It's true. Life is strange like that, seems like it's always testing us and when life isn't testing me, I feel like I must test myself. Move. Change. Try something new. Meet someone who challenges me. Go somewhere that challenges me. San Francisco.

So I have passed through excitement, loneliness, confusion, and just general wonderment at how hard it is to build a life again in a new place. College was easy to meet people, we were from everywhere trying to do everything. Mostly fit in, pass classes, figure out who we were. When I first moved to Philly, I was fresh out of college (you could smell the new on me, I remember what it was like when we hired recent college grads, like NY in summer. ugh.). That company was 70 people, mostly my age, and growing. I met my friend who was the only friend I reconnected during Philly Take 2. I drank a lot. I went out. I put on weight. I started smoking. I fell in love. I think. I was a mess. I had to leave. Mexico. Honduras.

Peace corps was easy too. The only gringos in town, 50 of us in training for 3 months, the first time I played and enjoyed basketball in over 4 years. It was great. Then my site, isolation, new friendships, language, heat so much heat, frustration, road trips in the back of pickup trucks. I remember the views, but I missed some of the old friendships. I went back to Philly. It wasn't the same. You can't go home, people say that. It's probably true, but home always changes. I still call where I grew up home, and I haven't lived there for 13 years. In a few years, I will have lived away from there longer than there, but will I have someplace else to call home? Right now, I doubt it, but I'm still struggling sometimes in San Fran adjusting, meeting people. 3 people have quit from my company since I moved. I initially resigned, then I agreed to transfer. Did I make a mistake? But it doesn't matter, because I'm here now right and I need to just act on that. I still over analyze. I always will, but there are a few little things coming back to me that I had forgotten a long time ago. Competitiveness. Running outside, and challenging myself to run up the hills, make it farther, make it faster. It's been a long time since I allowed myself to be competitive. Can you be competitive and not driven? Vice versa? I have started to think again, meaning my mind is freeing itself up from it's own labyrinth's, finding it's way out. I'm becoming comfortable here. I even started blogging again. Is that a metaconceptual reference to this post? Psuedointellectually speaking theorizations. It is all coming back to me.

In my mind, two things are happening. One is this trickle of competitiveness. I tried to kill that once, a long time ago. Can you really change who you are? That's worth a long blog in itself. The other is passion. I tried to kill that too. College. Heartbreak. Stoicism seemed easier. In a way, it is. Killing passion helped me control my competitiveness. It killed me inside though. I have stated before 100 Years of Solitude is my favorite novel, and it is, but I've never really stated why. It's one character, the colonel, and the description of his isolation. Everyone in the novel is isolated, but my isolation is his. He's not a happy positive character you necessarily want to realize you connect with. I don't know yet what that means for me, or what the decisions of my youth have done to me or if I can fix them. You can't go home again right? Am I just fucked?

I'm not. I'm older, wiser. I understand more now, I just need to work myself through not who I was, but who I can become. Forget my old shyness and quirks. I have new quirks, embrace those. Be who I am now, not who I was. Now I am a 31 year old new citizen of San Francisco. I may not be here in 1 year, but for now, I need to embrace it. And I need to embrace me, and continue to try to understand me. It's hard for me, I can get so lost in the self analysis I abstract myself. My sister once yelled at me when I described my friends because I made them into characters in my world view, not people. Quirky. We all create our own drama.

I think it was Ghandi who said something like Be the change you want to see in the world. I try. I want the world to be fun and whimsical, so I try to be. The world isn't. Neither am I always. Sometimes. So I'm a work in progress. San Francisco and me, we're a work in process too. I'm more comfortable though, now, after a few months. I still get lonely, I still fight myself on some things, but I'm better. I am anxious for the new year to come and pass, to get by that hump, but then I'll be okay. I'll be blogging more for my handful of dedicated readers. And you must be dedicated to read this far, but it's been building up in my head for a long time. It's therapy for me to write, has been since college, whether it is something like this, or a story, or whatever. We all have demons. Or anybody interesting has demons, although that's not always a good thing.

That's enough. My first real San Francisco blog ends now. Maybe tomorrow I'll be more whimsical? Demon-letting is nice, but whimsy is more fun.