Home again, Home again, Jiggity Jig

I'm home again, a full 90 minutes before the blog deadline. I was going to write about how troublesome it is to have personal connections to celebrities, but right now all I can think about is HOME. I had some complicated feelings about Boston this weekend, but I felt such happiness as I got closer to home. The first time I saw a sign for Boston, I was mostly just happy that I wouldn't be driving forever. Driving on to the Mass Pike and finding a familiar rest stop (of known and much better quality than those in Connecticut, thankyouverymuch) made me start feeling at home again. Watching the distance to Boston creep downwards on signs, driving past towns I know, letting out a little cheer when I hit 495, having been on Long Island's 495 mere hours ago, getting on to *my* stretch of 95... My favorite things about taking route 2 home is coming over that hill and seeing Boston shining down below me in the distance. Boston. My home.

I spent this weekend in Manhattan and on Long Island, where I grew up and where most of my family still lives. My life has been split about 65/35 between Long Island and Boston, so far. The only time I've spent more than two weeks outside New York or Massachusetts was my summer in San Francisco last year. I really enjoyed my time in San Francisco. I also really enjoy Seattle, Chicago, New Orleans, Miami, Madison... and those are just in this country. I've only left North America once, and all I saw was London and Dublin. I've never even been to Mexico or any part of Canada beyond Toronto. There is *so much* world out there that I haven't seen, and yet I find myself wanting to buy a house in Boston and plan to live here for the rest of my life. I am torn between my desire to travel and explore and expand my horizons, and my desire to form a really solid, permanent rock hard connection to a place, to plant my flag and call it my own. I want the luxury to spend perhaps three months of every year in different places, for 1-3 months at a time, and to take some of my nearest and dearest friends with me, because with the right people, I'll go anywhere. If everyone I knew in Boston decided to move to Iowa, I'd go. History and architecture and culture are nice, but places are really about people to me. There's a Billy Joel song, "You're My Home", that has this to say:
Well I'll never be a stranger
and I'll never be alone
wherever we're together
that's my home.

Home could be the Pennsylvania turnpike
Indiana's early morning dew
high up in the hills of California
home is just another word for you.

My boyfriend came to San Francisco with me last summer, and I realized that home is, in fact, wherever we're together. I know that is horribly sappy, but it's a very convenient thing to realize.

San Francisco is painfully far away. I am very disappointed that transcontinental travel is not getting any faster. I realize it is utterly amazing that we can fling ourselves three thousand miles in six hours, but it's still a pain. If Boston and San Francisco were "quick weekend trip" distance apart, my life would be significantly easier.

New York, however, is right there. People go from Boston to New York and back again in a single day, and it's grueling but not insane. I can't count how many weekend trips I have taken down there. The buses have gotten really cheap and convenient, it's a totally reasonable drive if you have a car, there's a ferry to Long Island, flights are cheap and fast, and there's even Amtrak, which is sometimes the right option even though it is not the fastest or cheapest. :-) I grew up 40 miles from Manhattan, a mile from a train station that would send you right into the heart of Manhattan. I was always in "the city", as we always called it, several times a year for my entire youth, but I never spent the night there until I was in my 20s. My trips were frequent, but very contained. I went to museums, Central Park, parades, and so many Broadway shows, and then I always went home. I feel like I know New York, but I know that I only know it as a visitor. I've still never spent more than three nights in a row in the city. Yesterday I wound up in the upper west side at 7 am on a saturday, and found yet another New York experience that was entirely new to me. I want to stop these one night stands and have a serious fling with New York, the way I did with San Francisco, but it's hard to convince myself to make that kind of commitment when I can in fact just go there every weekend if I want to. Oh, New York, I don't know what to do with you!

Musings from San Francisco

Hello, blog. I'm in California, about to go to sleep in my friends' attic. I am really glad I'm on this trip. I lived out here in San Francisco last summer, for three months right after graduation. I hadn't realized how much I'd forgotten, but it's been delightful to have memories come flooding back. While getting fabulous drinks at Berretta earlier tonight, I wondered out loud if I'd adore SF less if I wasn't always on here on vacation. To me, SF is a magical place where I get enough sleep, wander around, and see my friends. Because I'm always here for a limited period of time, my friends tend to prioritize spending time with me while I'm here, and can be more easily convinced to go out to nice or interesting places. And the weather's not so bad.

I've never been on a trip this long without having an SO or a group of a friends who were also traveling. It's a bit weird. I've had a cold most of the time here, and getting sick while traveling alone really sucks. I was only truly miserable for a few hours, and thankfully that was one of the nights when I had a room to myself that I could be in as long as I wanted without being in anyone's way.

I hate that so many of my friends live so very far away, but it's nice to have a city I can go to and have a solid friend base in. Vacations here are very non-threatening, and rather cheap without any hotel costs. It's almost like... a refuge I can retreat to? An oasis? I last came here right after graduating from MIT. I came here my last two Spring Breaks at MIT, which always needs to be some concentrated relaxation and rejuvenation in the middle of the hell of MIT. I also came here right before I began my final year at MIT, right after leaving a job that I'd wished had ended differently. Now I'm here because I got laid off. I didn't realize until I started writing this that I'd never come here except to get a respite from MIT stress. Someday I'll come here entirely randomly, I hope. The night before I got laid off, a friend emailed me and told me to come visit SF soon. I told her I'd be here as soon as my job ended, one way or another, thinking this would likely be a (somewhat longer) trip in August after my contract ended. Instead, I got laid off, and pretty quickly started looking at travel options. Because I was coming out to Seattle anyway, it seemed quite obvious to attach a SF trip as well.

I did not explicitly set out for this trip to be a time of reflection, but I was always open to it. I definitely have started some trains of thought that I think will be good for me. One of the few things that upset me about getting laid off was having to bump up the timeline on deciding what to do next in my career. I'm feeling much more secure in that regard now. I still don't know what I want to do next, but I'm much more confident in my own abilities and in the existence of interesting jobs. I went to a series of talks last night under the general theme of Art, AI, and Algorithms ("Do Androids Paint Electric Sheep?") and two of the talks left me feeling excited about things in my field for the first time in awhile. I took notes of things to read and investigate. I've been having really excellent small group or one on one conversations with old friends about life. I feel like my intellectual curiosity is starting to return to me, having been stifled by that job that left me with so little time or energy to think about anything. I realize that I need to give myself more time to recover from MIT. It was the most significant experience of my life, and it affected me in ways I don't even know yet. It's been less than a year, I don't need to know what I'm doing with the rest of my life yet.

It'll be more than a week before I get back to MIT. Ha! I wrote MIT! Boston, I mean. Boston. See how it dominated me still? ;-) I hope the thoughts rumbling in my head continue during the rest of my west coast travels. We'll see.

Oh, and by the way, Iron Bloggers, I talked about IB today and I think a west coast league wants to form up. :-)