moving away

"For what it's worth: it's never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be.

There's no time limit, stop whenever you want.  You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing.

We can make the best of the worst of it.  I hope you make the best of it.  And I hope you see things that startle you.

I hope you feel things you never felt before.  I hope you meet people with a different point of view.

I hope you live a life you're proud of.

If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again."

-Benjamin Button

When I saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in 2008 I knew within minutes it was going to be one of the more profound moments in my life that had to do with a movie.  You might scoff at that, I know I would if I was reading it coming from someone else, but I've always loved movies in a way people might find surprising.  They make me run through a whole range of emotions I don't get to experience on a daily basis.  Certainly not that I can experience at the drop of a hat, and there's something fantastic about that.  Benjamin Button made me cry a whole bunch (big surprise) and it made me think a lot about my life.  That quote directly above, in particular, made me think a lot about my life.

I wasn't proud of it in 2008.

I'm not proud of my life today seven years later.  I mean, I am... but I'm not.  A big part of me has always feared I'd never be content with the people and places and things I've met, seen and done.  That no home is ever going to scratch the hidden itch in my mind of a greater place, or that no friend is ever going to say the one perfect thing I've waited an eternity for a friend to say.  Maybe that's the thing about people like me?  The dreamers, that is.  We are always coming up with bigger and better scenarios than what we've already seen, and we look forward to them because they are going to satisfy us.  They are supposed to satisfy us.

I believe that's a large part of why I write books; I can change and bend the story to my every whim and desire.  What was once a great fight scene might not be so great in five years when I've seen countless movies with better fights.  Might as well rewrite it!  In the moment of a character's death, I write certain dialogue to invoke the sadness that is appropriate.  Come back a year later and that dialogue feels melodramatic.  Might as well rewrite it!  I am always improving the story but not having to suffer the consequences.

In real life, there are consequences when you change things.  Sometimes they are for the better and sometimes for the worse.  That's what has kept me here in Wisconsin with my feet firmly planted on the ground, for better or for worse.  What if I moved away and lost my job?  Ran out of money?  Got in a car accident?  Got robbed?  Lost all of my belongings?  Couldn't pay my bills?  Someone died right after I moved?  Someone got sick and I had to move back?  What if I just couldn't afford it?

What if?  What if?  WHAT IF?!

Not that I haven't wanted to leave.  I just... couldn't.  I have always had a reason as to why, also.  I didn't have enough money or I didn't have someone to go with me or someone backed out of moving or I got a new job.  Yadda yadda yadda.  I started to realize over the last few years that if you are waiting for the timing to be perfect, it never will be.  Eventually you just have to settle on an idea and commit yourself to it, planning the best you can and, just a little bit, hoping for the best.  Two years ago I decided while on a trip to Austin that I would move there before I turned 30.  And if you know me (as most of you do) and if you've ever read my "new resolution" blogs (as I assume you have), you know I fulfill my goals.

If there is one person I hate letting down it's myself, and I think that is a mentality everyone should hold themselves to.  It works wonders for your self-esteem.  In a world made of people trying to please everyone else, I've learned a valuable lesson in that you can't always please those around you, and wasting your time and energy on it is a fruitless mission.  Aim for yourself, and after that you can worry about everyone else.

When I met Derek, someone equally driven to move away, I met my match in a person.  I met my challenge.  Here was someone who could (and would) hold me accountable for my statement of fact that I'd be moving in 2015, if not to Austin then to somewhere else in the country.  He didn't want to be living in Appleton, and I feared that if I were to back out of moving away, I'd be backing out of a future with him.  That isn't to say I am moving because of him, that is entirely inaccurate.  This plan was in motion long before he entered the picture.  He just held me to my word.

Luckily after our visit in March, Austin worked out for us as a place to live.  Having someone like Derek at my side has been wonderful.  Someone that not necessarily combats all of my potential excuses, so much as someone who provides a workaround for them that helps me through.  Someone that holds my hand when the stress is overwhelming, someone that listens without having to give an opinion.  Someone to tell me it's going to be alright when I drive away and can hardly see through the tears as I do so.

I think there was always this misconception from people about why I'd choose to move away from here.  "Oh, Sean hates it here." "Sean just can't wait to get away from this place." "Sean thinks it's so miserable here."  It all boils down to pretty much the same sentiment, that being Wisconsin is a horrible, horrible place and I'll only find my happiness by moving away to see if the grass truly is greener on the other side.

That's not it.  That's not true now and it never was at all.

If anything, the grass is almost certainly never greener on the other side.  I've learned that lesson a few times by now and I'm sure I'll learn it several more times over the course of my life.   That's the thing about lessons: they're never over.

What people get wrong about me is thinking that I've been hating my life in Wisconsin.  That I've been chomping at the bit to get out of here.  It could not be farther from the truth.

I love my life here.

I have my friends and my family here... I have nearly 19 years worth of memories here.  I became a teenager in Appleton, followed closely by becoming a man.  This is where I fell in love for the first time... it's where I fell in love for a second time.  I lost all of my grandparents while living here, I lost pets, I lost friends.  No "place" is ever going to take the spot in my heart of where I was when certain events happened.  It just won't.

But to stay in one place solely because of the past that attaches you to it... that's just not fair.  It's not fair to me when I want to see what else there is in the world, consequences and all.  It's not fair to the people around me when I'd keep thinking about a bigger life with different, not necessarily more, but different opportunities for me.  It would be doing a disservice to my friends and family.

When my family and I moved to Wisconsin in March of 1997, I was torn from a world I knew.  The only one I'd ever really known.  Wisconsin was as different from Southern California as milk is from soda.  But together with my family I learned and adapted.  Now I am faced with another opportunity of the same magnitude and it is one I've been waiting a very long time for.

Toward the end of June I had a guest in Pottery Barn named Lois, a gal I'd never had the pleasure of helping before but one I'd seen in the store more than a few times.  We chatted for a few minutes while I was helping her return some items, and she let me know that she had just turned 82 the day before.  She'd never been married, hadn't had kids, just loved her friends and her siblings and her books.  Lois told me she loves to read more than anything else and her eyes absolutely lit up when I told her I was an author.  She was happy with her life from the bottom to the top.  When our short chat ended, she started walking away and turned to me and said "Getting old isn't so bad, Sean."  I asked her what the secret was and she paused and looked at the ceiling for a second.  Lois turned to me with a certain glint in her eye and said "Always stay excited for things to come.  Don't let yourself get bored."

It's funny how as the date to move got closer, it became harder and harder to talk about leaving.  With @klreynol moving to Arizona I was on the other end of the situation, so I could just block it out until it was right in front of me.  That's the side I have always been on... the one where I watch people leave.  The one where I write a letter of goodbye and watch them fade in the sunset.  But with this scenario I have to think about it.  The logistics, the cost, the time and all of that hoo-ha.  You can't put something out of your mind when you are the planner, thinker and executioner of said thing.  But all the same, you keep it safe towards the back of your mind until the magnetics of what is right in front of you draws it out.

Friends start stopping by work to say hello, knowing full-well it is going to be the last time you see them for a long time.  In driving past my old house, the one I moved to when we left California, I realize I'm finally putting my life, the one I felt had become stagnant, into motion.  Living by my own rules, or rather, a new set of rules.

I can't help but look back on all of the things I've done while I've lived in Wisconsin and reminisce on them.  There was so much great stuff that happened here.  There was so much sad stuff.  Bad stuff.  Thrilling stuff.  Emotional stuff.  Every feeling that could be felt... it happened.

When I got sick as a 12 year old and missed two months of school because of my bad gallbladder, and having to deal with the doctors that didn't believe me.  The fallout of that event and not having any friends by the time I came back to school, effectively being the "new kid" once more.  The first time I kissed a girl.

The first time I kissed a boy.

The first time I sat down to write a "serious" story, one that I never stopped writing.  When I came out to my parents and weathered a storm that was not as turbulent as I thought it'd be but not entirely as comfortable as I'd have preferred.  The first time I found out I was being cheated on in a relationship, and drove home through a snowstorm at night with so much hurt and anger that I started screaming at the tops of my lungs.  The first time I moved out of the house.  The first pets I ever owned, named, and raised in my babies Paolo and Sophia; two ridiculous cats I bottle fed and kept on a heating blanket until they could take care of themselves.

The time I realized I was a fool to hope my three-year relationship was going to work out and the only thing I could think of to do was scream at the tops of my lungs in my living room as the fractures in my world finally splintered and the walls came down.  When I realized the actual key to my happiness was to set a series of goals for myself, culminating in a year of 26 new and exciting things that would take me so far from where I started that I wouldn't recognize myself when it was all done.

The day I published my first book.

And then the day I walked into the same Starbucks I'd been going to for 10 years to write my said books and met the love of my life without any intention of doing so.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf once wrote "if your dreams don't scare you then they aren't big enough."  My dreams were always a little too big... maybe just a little too grand for them to be applicable to a life like mine.  I think what I needed to do was scale them back a bit until they were just barely attainable, and then go for it full-force.  Never set a goal for yourself that you are going to reach with no problem.  Where's the fun in that?  Where's the sense of fulfillment that comes with that?

Do what I did.

Decide to move across the country and don't change your mind even when you are a month out with no job lined up, then three weeks out with no home lined up, then two weeks out with (yet again) no job lines up.  Trust, as I did, that everything that is supposed to fall into place will, and all you've got to do is have a little hope.

Believe, make the leap, and have faith.

I'll see you in Austin (c;