Too Many People on the Bus from the Airport/Too Many holes in the Crust of the Earth

So I have been neglecting my blog.  I haven't even been writing in the dog-eared moleskine that Jim donated to me two Christmases ago.  I used to write every day.  I would sit on the train headed towards Highland Park and scrawl everything I was experiencing across the pages of my notebook.  I would sit at the Starbucks across the street from my branch and judge the impossibly thin mothers balancing their extra-hot-non-fat-triple-caff-lattes with their Louis Vuitton purses, extravagant strollers (that cost more than my car), and perfectly groomed dogs tethered to their owners by designer leashes, stalk down the cobblestone sidewalks. 

I love writing, I really do.  I just haven't been inspired to write these last few months.  Or the inspiration strikes but the follow-through doesn't.  You would think that the major life change that I went through last summer/fall would result in thoughts, emotions, and poorly constructed anecdotes overflowing onto this blog.  I guess that they have at times.  I have tons of attempted entries that I don't plan to share.  Many of which sparked by a raging bout of PMS.

I packed my life up into clear plastic bins and moved out of state to a city I had only visited several times, to an apartment I had never seen, to live with a girl I had only met once.  Things like this do change you.  You learn to adjust, to accept, to negotiate one way streets around Wrigley field.  You learn that some things are just not worth making a big deal over, and that there are others that its okay to respond to with panic.  There is this little bit of your childhood that disappears during a move like this.  The whimsy that you believe makes you unique, that makes you likable, starts to diminish.

Not all bad.

I learned a lot in my four months in Chicago.  I did.  There were things that I loved.  I loved being able to catch the red line and take it to the loop on my days off.  I loved wandering down Michigan avenue and pretending I belonged there, acknowledging the silly tourists that snapped pictures of things I decided not to get excited over.  I loved that my best friend was four blocks away, right next to a Chipotle.

I couldn't build a life on these things alone though.  I couldn't stay at a job that made me completely miserable, or with a roommate who I barely knew.  I couldn't value my time there when I wasn't even living paycheck to paycheck, when I had to call home just to beg my parents to put enough cash in my checking account so I could pay for the $2.25 subway ride home.

I have been home for three months now.  Three months to reflect on the ups and downs of my time in Chicago, and I feel like a little light has been extinguished inside of me.  That whimsy that I valued so highly, that I believed made me who I was, has become increasingly difficult to find.  There was a loneliness I felt in Chicago that I assumed would stay there after I left, but it didn't. 

I don't know that I would go back and change my decision on moving there or not.  Lets face it, I wasn't entirely happy with how my life was going before the move.  I am glad that I know what I know now, and it was an incredible learning experience.  I suppose that, at this point, I wouldn't change anything.  I am grateful for what I learned about myself, my friends, and my family.

Sorry I've been away from the blogosphere for so long.  I will try to fix that.