The song has a lyric, "You can check in any time you like, but you can never leave."
Today it was time to test that theory, it was time to leave California. I'd been there a long time, 11 years (except for the interlude when I gave living in France a try). It's always been hard to answer when people ask me where I'm from. I'm from NJ, in the sense that I spent my entire childhood there. But I'm from California in the sense that it's where I've spent my entire adulthood. So which place has best defined me?
If I were a car (can you tell I've just spent a lot of time driving?) I'd say I was manufactured in NJ. I got my wheels and learned to walk, got my horn and learned to talk. The engine was built and I learned how to run. But I didn't go places until I was in California.
When I applied to law school I only applied to places where I'd be willing to live. Being from the Northeast I figured I'd be comfortable there. But when the acceptance letters came, and my best option was a school in the Northeast, it was a hard decision to make to leave my home and start over again far away. After weeks of agonizing I reached a conclusion but it was only on Thursday that I put the plan into action.
It seems sort of ironic; most people head west to pursue their dreams. In American culture there's always something romantic and dreamy about the West, about heading off into the sunset. And here I am, going East to follow my dreams.
Night was falling as I drove out of Nevada and descended into the Salt Lake area. Some rainclouds had congregated around the hills, and the waning sunlight provided them with all sorts of pastel tints, turning them orange and illuminating their precipitation so that I passed under an archway of rainbows. And so it seems that just because you are facing East doesn't mean you don't get head off into a gorgeous sunset.
This entry was actually posted on Aug. 4. However, it was mentally composed on 7/31 so I changed the date when I posted today. I like to keep the posts spread out, and while I was travelling across the country there was no time for anything other than driving and sleeping. Blogging had to wait until now (now being 8/4)