stim-u-li

I'm in my crunch week, I haven't slept more than 7 hours in the last three days, and I have a presentation to finish before work in four hours.

Naturally, I will blog.

I'm going to participate in the #reverb10 31 daily prompts, to get my creative juices flowin'.

Day One: (playing catch up here!)

December 1 One Word.
Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you?

HOME.

I've actually lived in three cities this year, with four months in each, and you'd think that all that moving would leave me increasingly disconnected from my surroundings and feeling rootless.

Far from it. I've felt more at home wherever I've been this year than I have since my early twenties, since before the dread QLC (quarter life crisis). City #2, where I spent the first third of the year, was the first place I ever truly lived outside of my own hometown. I had to fight tooth and nail to make that place my own and it took a damn-long-time. My last four months there were undoubtedly my best; my best adventures, my friends, my best everything in City #2. What do I learn? That no matter where I am, if I have the right kind of relationships, I will be home.

Additionally, those relationships, those perfect, amazing friendships or what have you that make you feel connected to people and like you belong to one another- those are valuable and hard to find. I am %^*%&ing good at making friends, but my difficulty transitioning into City #2 really showed me just how much I'd built in the Hometown, and how impossible it would be to recreate that in just a few months. (But damn if I didn't try!)

Now I've been in City #3, and I've never ever felt more at home. I felt at home here in the first two weeks. I love the people I live with, my work, my house, my everything... I even love my commute. I can tell when I start to feel affection for buildings and the guy that tries to sell me newspapers from him on the second corner before my office and when I get excited about weather and revel in all of the possibility of a place... that what is really going on is that I am at home internally. I'm at home in myself again.

A lot of this has to do with making grieving progress over evildevilboy. Air smells fresher, my clothes seem to fit better (they don't though) and all the little details of life are bringing me joy again. I feel like I'm adding to my life again, instead of just trying to stay afloat.

Additionally, I've accepted that I want to live close to my family. I had to actually give myself permission to want that, I've felt like it makes me weak. Really, I'm just lucky to have a good one... my family is my gift horse, and I'm going to stop looking it in the mouth.

(Great writing? God no. Am I at least rambling???? Better than silence!)

Paisley out.