Which way is home?

Recently, the thought that keeps floating through my mind in those few quiet moments I have (there are few of them because I try to keep my life as noisy as I can tolerate to avoid these exact thoughts) is: I want to go home.

The only problem is, I have no idea where that would be.

Born and raised in Chicago, one would think that this city would naturally fall into place as my "home." The place I would wind up if I clicked my ruby slippers and wished myself away. However, after living in Michigan for the passed four and a half years, I'm finding readjusting to Chicago life...challenging. That is putting it mildly.

My father told me recently, that oftentimes our souls (or spirits or whatever you want to call our inner beings) take longer to move than our physical bodies. Like my spirit is still on the road from Michigan to Chicago despite my physical being having been here for nearly two months. Like my spirit is just taking it's sweet time. Like it decided it would be fun to take a leisurely ride on a turtle to get here. Like by the time it gets here I will have moved on to my next destination. Like I will never be reunited with my spirit again, though that seems melodramatic.

I like to imagine a little spirit Hannah wandering through a forest somewhere between Southwest Michigan and Chicago, watching the leaves change colors, maybe taking a nap inside tree hole while visiting with her new friend Mr. Squibbles the Squirrel.

"Mr. Squibbles," she would say after awaking from her nap, "how is it that you leave this tree hole every day and find your way back to it every night? And as a follow-up, do you think of this tree hole as your home?"

Mr. Squibbles, being quite the host has brought out the finest of his acorn collection for the evening's entertaining. He looks down at the small spirit with a twitch and a beady blink. "I wouldn't say I find my way back here every night. In fact, I live in this tree, only when I find it. Other times I live in other trees."

"But don't you ever wish you could find a particular tree? Don't you ever wonder which way your home is?"

"As long as I have food to eat, a warm spot to sleep, and a bushy tail to chase, I'm pretty sure I am home."

"But when you're feeling really lost and you can't decide which tree to sleep in, what then?"

"Follow the nuts."

"That would sound dirty if you weren't a squirrel."

"Indeed," Mr. Squibbles would say, knocking an nut on the rim of the tree hole, as squirrels are like to do.

"Since you are a squirrel though..."

"Since I am a squirrel, I mean follow the food. Follow the things that make you happy and let you thrive. It's not enough to live."

"Well, that's very deep for a squirrel. Thank you."

Though Mr. Squibbles is merely a squirrel of the imagination, I can't imagine a real squirrel thinking that differently from the fictitious Mr. Squibbles. Follow the things that make you happy, follow the things that will not only let you survive but will let you thrive. So the only question I have to answer is, what will make me happy at this point in my life? If I find the answer to that oh so simple question, maybe I'll find an answer to the question of what I should do with my immediate future.

Follow the nuts. Find home.

At the end of the road

What, pray tell, does a person do upon graduating from college? I'm talking undergrad, small liberal arts college, English degree, graduated. Not Harvard, business degree, have a trust fund, graduated.

I honestly have no idea what I'm doing with my life. I know a lot of people feel that way, in fact I know they do. But a lot of those people have dreams, something they are holding out for. My problem is, I feel like I don't have any dreams. At least no tangible dreams. No dreams that I can put a name on in a convenient answer to the inevitable question of: "What is your dream job?" Or worse yet: "what are you going to do now?"

So what am I doing instead of solving the dream-job conundrum? I'm starting a blog. How often will I write this blog, you ask? I'm terribly sorry, I couldn't quite hear what you said, I'm going through a tunnel (no I'm not sitting in my bed typing this...of course not).

I have days where I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing with my life (actually, that's like everyday). More like, once in a while I have a day where I feel like I DO know what I'm doing. Those are the days where I wake up feeling really well rested and get up and do something semi-productive, like looking for a job or an apartment. I can usually make it to early evening, that time of night where one starts to think, "what the hell am I going to make for dinner? Ramen. Okay," before that nagging feeling that I actually know nothing starts to come back. I start to second guess all the potential decisions I made during my "productive" day, and worry that maybe they were all wrong after all. THEY WERE ALL WRONG.

Then I'm back to where I started. Usually watching Netflix. Because the lives of those fictional characters are just as messy as mine, but at least there's some sex thrown in.

So I titled this entry "On endings" because I feel like up till this point, I've had a clear-cut path. I've know found the end of that path, and it doesn't lead to the Emerald City. No, no, it leads to the wild. The untamed jungles of "adulthood" - that time in life where you all of a sudden realize you need to start paying taxes and think about wikapedia-ing what "escrow" and "deductible" and various other mysteriously-frightening words mean. It doesn't help that there are billions of other people wandering about in this wilderness, because by the time you find one who can speak your language, and who's willing to put up with your shit, you've probably already hit your head on low-hanging branches at least enough to cause a decent concussion. And even when you do find another person, there's a decent chance that you will lose them again.

What does this extended metaphor mean for my life? It means I'm confused. I get so confused, in fact, that even when it comes to small decisions I've recently become the most indecisive person in most any room I walk into. What do I want to do tomorrow? Can I babysit your child? What should we make for dinner? What time is it? Hell if I know! 

While these small-ish moments of indecision are not life-altering or threatening for that matter, they make the moments of large decision making essentially impossible. Stay at home? Move back to Michigan, closer to my friends? (Friends, do I have those?) Where should I apply for a job? What kind of job should I look for? How do you get a job? Can I afford to move? How should I go about meeting a guy? Should I try and make new friends here? Am I happy? What is life? As you can see, this line of questioning almost always dissolves into an abstract questioning of what the meaning of life is. It is not particularly helpful.

Maybe I should give myself decision-making goals. Like, one big decision per week month. God, my life is going to move slowly. October's question: Should I move to Michigan? Sub-questions: if so, where? When? How?

Do you feel unsettled by the end of this post? Welcome to how I feel about my life.