On leaving
I haven’t written much lately. Life is somewhat in flux, though I still have 2 months before moving. I am mentally tagging the furniture in our house, separating it into "worth taking" and "not worth taking" categories. I am trying to work up the energy to do my lab reports (!) and work on grant submissions (!) — not 2 things one usually does at the same time. I am Googling my new neighborhood incessantly, trying to determine the availablity of yoga classes, dentists, gyms, CSA farm share programs, bloggers, jogging paths, and restaurants. I am checking retail outlets for my favorite local, sustainably produced, organic jam– which I will continue to buy in NewCity DESPITE the fact that it will no longer be local or (if you factor in the transport) particularly sustainable, because it is darn good jam. I am having delusions of grandeur about the projects I will finish before I go.
In short: I am trying to convince myself that my life is not about to change. Though it is.
People keep asking me if I am excited to go. Yes, I am. I am excited about my job and my lab and my students and exploring a new city. At the same time, I feel a little like (in the words of Candid Engineer), someone moved my cheese.
After college, I spent a year studying abroad in a country not entirely dissimilar to our own. All year, I complained: the supermarkets closed too early, the restaurants were too expensive, the trains cost too much, and there was nothing to do but go to the pub. Now in fact, there was also an excellent weekend market, a really good sandwich shop that sold bottled, fresh orange juice long before it was cool, beautiful architecture, a river for punting, a cute coffee shop, and a number of other good features. But somehow I was hung up on what the place was not. I never realized this until I got to grad school, and watched the European students try to adapt. Like me, a number of them got quite caught up in what our city was not– not Europe. Germans and French, Swiss and Austrians, Spanish and Danes, citizens of countries with antagonisms stretching back over the centuries– all came together in their criticism of American life, from the supposedly inane way that we like to say, "Hi, how are you?" but not expect an answer, to the difficulty of buying good cheese, to the lack of efficient public transport. I tell you, all the problems of the EU could be solved overnight if each citizen of a member country were required to study in America for a year.
I promised I would not be like that again. I would adapt. I would look for the good in each place, and try not to harp on the bad.
And yet, leaving this place still feels like a loss. Maybe that is inevitable.
