on moving and staying

Sometimes in certain moments of weakness, I wish that I could pack up a few of my meager belongings and move to another state without looking back. My top choices would be California, Maine, or Minnesota (don’t ask). And I’ll daydream about what I could purge my life of here and the refreshing new life I could make for myself somewhere else; the new, fascinating people I could meet; the hobbies and skills I could cultivate.

When I first moved to Springfield, I thought an 11-month stint in this foreign town could/would act as a precursor to my future endeavors (when my dreams were still a feigned reality). Even before any real heartbreak entered my life, I’d always wanted to move away to a place where I didn’t know anyone and could reinvent myself. However, my time here has shown me that that isn’t always the case. Sometimes you just can’t change who you are or whom you’ll miss. The underlying sentiment remains the same: I could never leave my family and I wouldn’t ever want to leave my friends. And in the more recent months, I’ve also come to terms with the inevitability of my future, and the very limited scope of that future.

There exists a fine line between whim and reality, like the line between frivolity and practicality. Every time I start thinking about moving to California and starting a new life, I force myself to cogitate on the next three years of my life and what that kind of commitment will demand. Just last summer, I typed up a long list of law schools in California, hoping and willing myself to apply and anticipate acceptances. But there was a moment -- I’m not sure when it was or how it came about -- when I realized that what I really needed wasn’t a weak possibility of a dream realized, but that I needed a real, tangible, future plan. And so I applied to law schools according to that plan. So far, I believe it's the right choice (at least, 94% of the time), despite its generally solidifying my place of residence to be Chicago for the next decade of my life.

I still slip into moments in which I daydream about leaving; I can’t really help it. But the more I figure out who I am and what I want and what I ultimately need, the more I realize that I need to stay in this blistering, two-seasons-a-year state, at least for a while. I should really revisit Sufjan Stevens and his albums about the Midwest...