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levertovfanThe upcoming month is going to be a really interesting time for me. My two fellow National Partnership Associates are leaving. I'm going to miss them greatly. Two more National Partnership Associates who I helped to recruit will be starting with the next orientation. For most of the month, Jen, our boss, will be largely incommunicado with the very good reason that she's getting married. So, as she said to me, I will be the National Partnership Team. It will go from being four people to one, plus two trainees. It's a challenge for which I'm trying to mentally prepare.
On a completely different topic...
I was having a conversation yesterday with a co-worker about her connection to the East Coast and New England in particular and she said something about how, even though she thinks the rest of the world is a great place to visit, in New England she knows the etiquette and it makes her feel comfortable and safe. Late last night, in one of those lovely late night intensive thought and self-examination sessions that I think most everyone is prone to on occasion, I started thinking about my own connection to place. Kira's recent post about place and several of my co-workers' feelings about home and where home is also brought on musings on this theme.
When I think about where I want to move, where I want to be, I'm increasingly less attached to the idea of staying in the Washington DC metro area. I think it does have something to do with the etiquette, the people. I used to think that I wanted to go to college on the East Coast and probably live there for the rest of my life. My mother moved across the country because she wanted to get away from her parents and because she preferred the West Coast to the east, where people were more conservative, rigid, and type-A. I partly sought to emulate this (moving cross country to avoid my parents) and partly to reassert my own identity (by being more conservative, rigid and type-A than my mother). But now I'm here, in this weird area that's halfway Southeast and halfway Northeast, and I don't think that I want to be here, brushing shoulders on the metro with military men and East Coasters and Southern good ol' boys and gals for the rest of my life. The crime, and the fact that I live in an apartment that overlooks a 9/11 target and regularly travel on an unprotected subway system, don't help either.
The main foci that come up when I think about moving are the places I have lived, and do live: San Francisco, Marin, Northfield, Minneapolis, and DC. Curiously, however, another place comes up: Seattle. It's on the West Coast, and has weather that resembles the weather I grew up with, and it's a long enough airplane flight that my mother can't get there that easily (and maybe I ought to be more willing to let my mother more into my life). Moreover, Zil will probably be moving there and Kathy is already there. When I visited, it was idyllic. (I know it's not usually quite so much.) I could be yet another Californian moving to Seattle. But--could I get a job I wanted there? Would I only be moving because of issues that I have in creating a community for myself and they would just repeat themselves?
I am so, so ready for the summer to be over. It's so hot and sweltering and humid and sticky and I didn't grow up with this sort of weather. I want it to be cold, so that I can choose to warm myself and wear fuzzy sweat shirts and wrap myself in fleece blankets.
On a completely different topic...
I was having a conversation yesterday with a co-worker about her connection to the East Coast and New England in particular and she said something about how, even though she thinks the rest of the world is a great place to visit, in New England she knows the etiquette and it makes her feel comfortable and safe. Late last night, in one of those lovely late night intensive thought and self-examination sessions that I think most everyone is prone to on occasion, I started thinking about my own connection to place. Kira's recent post about place and several of my co-workers' feelings about home and where home is also brought on musings on this theme.
When I think about where I want to move, where I want to be, I'm increasingly less attached to the idea of staying in the Washington DC metro area. I think it does have something to do with the etiquette, the people. I used to think that I wanted to go to college on the East Coast and probably live there for the rest of my life. My mother moved across the country because she wanted to get away from her parents and because she preferred the West Coast to the east, where people were more conservative, rigid, and type-A. I partly sought to emulate this (moving cross country to avoid my parents) and partly to reassert my own identity (by being more conservative, rigid and type-A than my mother). But now I'm here, in this weird area that's halfway Southeast and halfway Northeast, and I don't think that I want to be here, brushing shoulders on the metro with military men and East Coasters and Southern good ol' boys and gals for the rest of my life. The crime, and the fact that I live in an apartment that overlooks a 9/11 target and regularly travel on an unprotected subway system, don't help either.
The main foci that come up when I think about moving are the places I have lived, and do live: San Francisco, Marin, Northfield, Minneapolis, and DC. Curiously, however, another place comes up: Seattle. It's on the West Coast, and has weather that resembles the weather I grew up with, and it's a long enough airplane flight that my mother can't get there that easily (and maybe I ought to be more willing to let my mother more into my life). Moreover, Zil will probably be moving there and Kathy is already there. When I visited, it was idyllic. (I know it's not usually quite so much.) I could be yet another Californian moving to Seattle. But--could I get a job I wanted there? Would I only be moving because of issues that I have in creating a community for myself and they would just repeat themselves?
I am so, so ready for the summer to be over. It's so hot and sweltering and humid and sticky and I didn't grow up with this sort of weather. I want it to be cold, so that I can choose to warm myself and wear fuzzy sweat shirts and wrap myself in fleece blankets.
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no subject
Date: 2005-08-17 10:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-18 02:02 am (UTC)really, if you do move there, it's just going to be ever so tempting to try to wend my way west, at least for a visit!
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Date: 2005-08-18 03:05 pm (UTC)