Monday, September 12, 2011

Day One, San Francisco.

It's 9:30pm and I'm exhausted... the kind of exhausted that comes from carrying desks and dressers up three flights of winding stairs. From tracking down the impound lot at 10pm to find my towed car with a $90 + $390 ticket slapped on the windshield. From driving and navigating through vertical city streets trying to chase down furniture from Craigslist to fill my empty room. From trying to wrap my brain around all this; that I have signed a lease, and now live on Shotwell Street in San Francisco.

Admittedly, it's a big change. My seasons this year have been all messed up (Jan-Feb = winter, Feb-May = late summer to fall, June-August = Summer) and I never even experienced springtime, but somehow that kind of change is easier. The changing of seasons, airport terminals, in and out of clothes that live in a suitcase - those kinds of changes I can process. Having a "real job", an address, a boyfriend on a tourist visa and a dwindling bank account... those are the pieces of "real life" that I'm having to come to terms with. 

And that being said, the beautiful thing about life is that it's complex. There's a learning curve in this city, and in this mid-20s life phase. You have to hit certain walls before you can skillfully climb over them... and even being exhausted, I'm smiling. I'm smiling because I realize where I am: my office right now is an empty bookshelf in the nearly empty living room of a sunny Victorian house that is my house. The fresh food in the refrigerator is from across the street, and I don't have to wait in line for it, or eat it out of a plastic container. My neighborhood reminds me of back in Salamanca; finding running paths through the city, using another language in daily conversation, seeing mural art and grafitti, smelling fresh bread, fish, and fruit. 

This new phase is an adventure; and overwhelming as it begins, it's a challenge that's welcome - and needed. Sometimes change means throwing your stability out the window and buying a cross-continental plane ticket. But for me, it's the opposite - change is finding stability in a time when everything is uncertain. It's making roots, even just little ones, that will ground me enough to move forward. No promises that I will stop browsing skyscanner for plane tickets ;) but for now, this is exactly where I want to be.