Payoff

As I get older, I'm not sure if I'm getting more impatient or if I'm getting less tolerant. I feel like I just want to settle into a life that suits me better than this one I'm currently wearing. Actually, my life is fine, it's just the location of my life that I find frustrating.

After graduating from massage therapy school in Chicago, I had to decide where I was going to live. I hated living in Chicago, but I wasn't sure if I was ready to head back out west or down south quite yet. So, I decided to come back to Michigan for a while. I grew up here, I knew the rules and was familiar with the feel of it, I had friends and family and I could pause for a year or two and get my hands (literally) around building my massage business and regroup before moving on to my next adventure. That was almost eight years ago and I want to get the hell out of here.

Detroit (second picture) has been bothering me since I got back almost a decade ago. Wow, just writing that I've been here almost a decade makes me feel a little sick. I don't like it, yet I have managed to buy a house and set up a life. I have my closest friends here, some close family members and a sweet house that would have cost five times what I paid for it if I had bought in in a place I actually liked to live. My life is totally awesome, I like it, I just want to move it somewhere else and bring everyone with me.

I have been extra agitated lately in my dealing with my surroundings. I don't like winter, the people around this part of the state are cranky and selfish, the state as a whole is about 30 years behind most others in regards to environmental issues, race relations and big business running amok. I find myself really hating where I am and I have been devoted to making some kind of peace with that.

Friday, I drove to Ann Arbor for a work meeting. As I merged onto M-14, traffic came to a halt. Then, a few minutes later, worked up to a crawl. As I got more and more grouchy, I stopped myself. It was a gorgeous day, I was listening to my iPod, and in the lane next to me, two cars up and in perfect view, there was a chopped, cherry '49 Mercury with mail slot windows, flames painted up the side and it grunted like a happy pig. So I took a breath, rolled down my window, turned up Prince and ogled the Merc. We all crept through the construction that whittled that lanes down to one. Everyone drove like a bunch of jerks, like they didn't care if they hurt anybody. 3, 4, 5 miles of two lanes blocked off and not one piece of construction work actually happened. No big orange trucks, no beer-bellied guys holding a sign that said "Slow". No jack hammers, no groups of guys watching other groups of guys work. Aside from the lanes being closed off by tall orange pylons, there was not one shred of evidence that any construction had happened or was going to happen. The lanes were blocked off for absolutely no reason. And I was 35 minutes late to my meeting. At that moment, I was struck with a huge realization.

I hate living in Michigan because there is no payoff.

I used to get asked all the time "how could you stand living in LA? There are so many people and the traffic and air are horrible". Well, I loved it. Every damn minute and here's why. When I lived in LA, I was going to acting school, spending my weekends at the beach or in Hollywood with my friends, living the life I had fantasized about since I was a kid. All my childhood dreams were rooted in Hollywood and there I was living right on Hollywood Boulevard. What's a little traffic and smog compared to that?

In Detroit, there is no payoff. I deal with traffic, tons of backwards thinking, crime, and most of the people that live here are stuck in reactive grouchiness. And for what? Nothing. Right now, Detroit is where dreams go to die, there is no ocean, no chance meeting with celebrity, no mountains, very little art and lots of repression. If I am going to survive intact, I need to get out very soon.

Recently, Goat had his friend visiting from San Francisco. Just talking about the sunset on the ocean made my heart ache. I lived in Santa Cruz (first picture) for a year and I pine for it on a regular basis. It was expensive, I had no family out there and no good job, but I loved it and I dream about living there again. I have ideas of moving to Arkansas, where my brother is, where it's mountainous and more mellow, no snow in the winter and plenty of outdoor activities within reach.

I don't know where Goat and I will land, but we both feel the itch to get out of Southeast Michigan. We have both lived in amazing places where putting up with certain things was definitely worth that payoff. While living in LA and in Santa Cruz, I worked hard to be there, I was exhausted at the end of each day, but completely invigorated and inspired. I slept very little because I didn't want to miss anything. I was thrilled to be awake and alive and to see what happened next. Once you've had that life, living in a place that doesn't inspire you every morning upon waking makes you feel like you are giving your energy away. Will I miss my friends? Hell yes, but that's what email, phones and airplanes are for. Besides, most of my friends want to get the hell out of Michigan too.

I'm glad there are people in the world who can do a day to day life on a nice even keel and are content wherever they are. I'm just not one of them. I need payoff.

Screw guilt.

I feel guilty.

It's a stunner of a day for the first of July, 68 degrees and sunny. Yet I remain sedentary on the front porch, sipping mango black sun tea and fidgeting with shoulds and supposed tos. I should be mowing the lawn and repainting my shutters. I'm supposed to take the dogs to Island Lakes to go hiking and canoeing with Goat. Yet I remain in my spot, contemplating a nap and a long stretch of sitting in a sunny patch on the carpet and reading. Watching that movie I've had from Netflix for three weeks, cozy on the couch with the dog and cats.

I have another 5k run this evening and I'm still sore from my bout of obsessive gardening yesterday. I ripped out some grass, weeded for hours, laid mulch around the boxwoods, trimmed back the shrubs, swept, hauled dirt and set all the yard waste by the curb to be swept up by the garbage men and composted. I am sore and tired and all I'm going to do today is relax until I go pick up Champ and we head up the the race.

Yet outside calls to me, all blue skied and wind whispery. Temptress you are, you beautiful day you. Calling to me to step out into the sunshine and replace the storm door. Feel the breeze tickle my ears and sun toast the top of my head as I clean up the back yard.

This totally reminds me of swimming parties my coach had back in my early teen years. A few times a season on the day of a swim meet (usually against our big rivals, Bloomfield Surf) Coach Dan would gather up the younger team members after practice and bring them to his house to watch scary movies and hang out for most of the day. Every good swim coach knows that a swimmer's favorite thing to do after swim practice is swim all day until we were so tired we could barely see straight. Fat lot of good we would have been competing in a swim meet if we were near drowning from exhaustion. Dan was a great coach and knew to keep us quiet, he would have to supervise all of us. Zombie movies, healthy snacks and girls giggling about boys are the things I remember. Good times.

So today, I am without my team mates of days gone by, but I still feel that little excited wiggle in my belly. I get to spend a decadent day napping in the sun and other limited energy output activities. Tonight I get to go run.

I kinda feel like a kid again for the first time in a long while.