For the past month or so, I’ve been working towards making the years-long dream of moving to California a reality. While I still maintain, at my core, that plucky enthusiasm and excitement at the idea of pulling up stakes and starting a new chapter in my life somewhere I never thought I’d be it’s been buoyed somewhat by some stark realizations.

My thoughts here, like in most blog posts, will be a stream of abstract thoughts and conclusions but they revolve around a central theme.

 

I’ve never really had a series finale.

 

What I mean by that is back during the 90s pretty much every sitcom ended with the main cast of characters would be moving out of what had been their home the entire run of the show. Part recap show, part solemn, yet hopeful, introspection generally rounded out a few seasons worth of life lessons and laugh tracks. The last shot generally featured one of the characters looking back on an empty living room one last time before turning the lights out or closing the door behind them.

 

Executive Producer. Roll credits. I’ve never really done that before.

 

I moved down to Virginia with my sister. No job lined up. $800 in my pocket. All of my stuff jammed into my Dodge Neon. I didn’t even know what the place we were moving to looked like. I just knew I wanted to get away from where I grew up in some cobbled-together attempt at finding myself.

 

After a couple of years or so there, I moved into a townhouse my then-girlfriend rented with some of her friends. They had already been there for a while themselves, so I was just kinda the odd person joining an existing dynamic. My then-girlfriend and I decided to find our own place closer to the city after a year and some change. She found a place. Picked out some furniture, and again I moved without much thought or input. Or care, really.

 

The concept of a home felt… Lifeless to me. Like many things, it wasn’t something I put a ton of thought into. It wasn’t really until my then-girlfriend became my ex-girlfriend and moved out did I really start to consider such a notion like making a place your own.

 

Necessity breeds evolution, I suppose.

 

There I was, in a place I didn’t pick out, left to pick up the pieces that once was my status quo emotionally, socially, and other ways. It gave me a lot of time to think on my life and the choices I’d made. In a lot of ways, that chapter, as tough as it was, really came to define my thirst for personal growth.

 

Over the new few years, I made this place my own. I came up with décor. I painted an accent wall. I did impractical things like turn a 70 inch tv into a computer monitor. That was cool and all, but in the back of my mind it always felt like some fundamentally unsatisfying foundation.

 

Part of my journey towards self discovery and introspection has always been about proving to myself that the negative thoughts that almost constantly swirl in the back of my mind are wrong; that I’m capable of living the kind of life I want, and accomplishing the kinds of things I want to accomplish. Have I really held true to that ideal on the homefront? Have I really?

 

Like a lot of things, I guess it’s a matter of perspective and how much I want to let negative thoughts influence my train of logic.

 

I went into moving to California with the solemn conviction that I felt I’d be pound-for-pound happier on the west coast. I still believe that, and am excited to find out if the theory holds water but the challenge of making this actually happen has proven to be so much more difficult than I thought it would be.

 

You never realize exactly how much stuff you have until you have to move a ways away. You never realize how engrossing and encompassing ‘errands’ can become, or how entangled canceling services or setting up services can be until you’re in the thick of it. It’s not until you’ve waded so far in that there’s actually no way of going back that you realize exactly how much effort you’ve signed yourself up for.

 

I guess what’s interesting about my immediate situation to me is that this is all self-imposed. I’m not moving to California for a job, or a relationship, or any specific life circumstance that at all approaches necessity. I’m doing it just because I want to, and because I’m fortunate enough to work at a place that allows me to indulge my logistical insanity.

 

This past month, past year has largely been challenges and obstacles of my own choosing and design.

 

The analogy of a rocket taking off has come to mind a lot over the course of this whole thing. The amount of effort needed just to get off the damn ground dwarfs the amount spent once you’re actually breaking free of the planet’s gravity. But you also don’t appreciate what’s back on the Earth until you’re starting to embark on that trip.

 

I’ve written about it in different capacities over the past couple of years, but moving to the other side of the country has really shed a light on my shortcomings as a brother and son. I simply have not spent as much time as I should have and, really, wanted to with my family.

 

I’ve always felt like something of the odd person out in my family, but that’s always been by my own hangups and proclivities. I don’t think I’ll ever truly fit in anywhere. I’ll find a way to get in my own way at some point. At least that’s been how life has gone for me. But my family’s come to accept that about me.

 

A few times now someone in my family or a friend out of the area will ask me if I have anyone to help with me with the move, and there always seems to be a measure of surprise when I say no. My being a hermit, incapable of maintaining basic social rapports has truly left me on an island here. For a long time, I’ve felt like Northern Virginia just wasn’t really ‘for’ me. The people here are different from me, I had concluded. But maybe I let that assumption push people away and

out of my life.

 

Either way, I humbly admit it feels bad to realize I don’t feel like I could ask anyone here to help with anything, or would really want to. I simply haven’t earned that kind of friendship from anyone here in a long time.

 

I worry that I will move to California and just… Disappear. I’ll be working remotely full time. My ambitions are largely individualistic in nature. I worry that I will repeat the same mistakes I’ve made here and in up feeling alone. Only my family will be a world away. Only I would have truly isolated myself from anything that at all felt familiar.

 

I’m hopeful at the same time, though.

 

Maybe this move will actually improve my relationship with my family. Maybe this move will allow me a clean slate to make better use of the development I’ve had personally. Maybe I’ll make friends that would want to hang out with me consistently. Maybe I won’t feel so lonely or detached from the world. Maybe I’ll feel like I belong somewhere.

 

Maybe I won’t. I don’t know. I’m game to find out, I guess.

 

My life has been a fervent dedication towards impracticality, and I feel like when I close the door of this place in Arlington behind me for the last time it will be a chance to define life fully on my own terms. I will be banged up, exhausted, worn thin, and ready for reprieve by the time I make it to California and start to settle in but I don’t know when my new place will feel like home.

 

I won’t be moving there with someone. I won’t have my sister, or a significant other to share the experience with. The movers will finish dropping stuff off. The stuff I’ve ordered will make it. The door will close, and it will just be me and two confused cats. What then?

 

I’m both excited for and terrified by that answer.

 

Being a loner is something I’ve always prided myself on to an extent. I’m paying for that now. The challenge of it all though will make me stronger, though. On days like today, when I feel genuine despair, loneliness, and an incapability to continue I remind myself of that first time I watch the sun set at the beach, knowing that I live close enough to see that every day if I so chose and I feel like I can push a little further.

 

I’m working my ass off to make this a reality. No matter how anything pans out, I’ll be proud of that at least.

 

I still have a couple of days to get everything packed and ready. I guess life would be too simple and easy if I didn’t also pack my imperfections and emotional turmoil.