Why?

California, I couldn’t understand why on earth people wanted to live here. If there weren’t earthquakes there were mudslides, if there weren’t fires there was an intense drought. In fact in grade school social studies class I learned that it was predicted that there would be an earthquake so fierce that California would eventually fall into the Pacific. (Maybe Porfirio Diaz knew that when he sold the land to the U.S. for a million dollars.)

Why am I here in this state destined to fall into the sea?

Minneapolis to me was like that person you know that you should really break up with but you don’t because it is was too comfortable and you do not think that you will ever have the strength to start over again.

Minneapolis is a great city, being farther away has really allowed me to see that. I will sing its praises in posts to come, but I was so tired of the Minnesota Can’t Do Attitude.

I was in this horrible rut. Get up, go to work, go home, eat, sleep, get up, go to work eat sleep. When the non-profit I had worked at for seven long and arduous years sank into the red and there was get up, go to work, go to job number 2, eat perhaps, sleep barely enough I new that it was time to go.

I honestly have not done anything outside of my comfort zone since going to an arts based high school. Not since sixteen, that is way too long to go without risking something big. I didn’t want to be on my deathbed in the Powderhorn, Cochran or Hale Page neighborhood and think to myself “Wow, I haven’t done anything risky since I was a teenager. Who is going to feed all of my cats?”

I moved here too because I fell in a Norah Ephron-like love with a former high school mate. Like how I saved the real sappy reason for last?

So that is how I found myself here.

(If you read Smog Life you might have read this post already, mostly)