I sometimes wonder: what if?

What if I had been born with more imagination, talent, artistic ability or intellectual capacity than was granted to me? What if I’d grown up to have more wisdom than is mine?

What if I had more depth as a human being?

What if I hadn’t been born working-class in the Midwest but rather to wealth in mid-town Manhattan? Or to college professors in Berkeley?

What if I’d not been so slight in stature that I was typically the last kid picked for a team? What if I were tall and strong, with perfect teeth and an infectious, extraverted personality? What if I’d had charismatic good looks in this life?

What if I had been able to write the Great American Novel or been able to produce photographic art rivaling Ansel Adams? Or Annie Leibovitz?

What if I’d lived one of the great love stories? How would my life be different if I’d found my soulmate early in life and had a loving, devoted partner by my side through all my struggles?

What if I’d not had to cope with chronic pain for most of my life?

What would my life be like today if even one of these things had been different?

These are thoughts I have on occasion. Typically, I’ll go down this path when I’m feeling a little sorry for myself or things are just generally not going well. That’s not really the case at this moment, though, because what currently brings on such mental meanderings is that I’m wondering how it is that I ended up here. After 37 years an Oregonian, here I am, all of a sudden, a Californian.

I guess the most terrible thing that’s going on right now is that I’m missing “home.”

I was on the phone yesterday with a friend who was, herself, 19 years an Oregonian — and has just moved to Pennsylvania to take on a new job. At the other end of the line I heard her teenage daughter come into the room and ask who she was talking to, to which she replied, “my friend Jim, in California.”

Jim. In California.

How weird to hear those words.

How could this possibly be?

Earlier this year I was a finalist for a position that would have landed me in one of my favorite little college towns on the planet: Corvallis, Oregon. From the moment I discovered the announcement, I pictured myself there, living back in Corvallis: my home for a full twenty years (1970-90).

What if I’d gotten that job?

I guess in a parallel universe, I wowed them at the interview and ended up there. But in this version of reality, I experienced another outcome: needing to move on from the rejection and continue with the interviews. I subsequently traveled to places like Burlington, Vermont; Palm Desert, California; Vancouver, Washington; and Kentfield, California…ending up with the job offer that landed me in my current location.

So here I am: now a Bay Area Golden Stater…wondering what life has in store for me in this place…and having an ache in my heart for a land I call home.

Things I’m wondering about…

• Why is it two specific blog entries have been obscenely popular with you out there in recent times? For example, in the past 7 days alone there have been 1,431 Google searches that have led ya’ll to an entry from last February entitled “March on the Pentagon.” And, coming in second is another piece with an entirely different kind of political slant; an entry from November 2006 called “A New Season” has received 238 looks in the past week. What can this possibly be about? (All this activity is a little intimidating!)
• Why is it that the statistics generated by SquareSpace for my blog are WAY WAY DIFFERENT from the Sitemeter stats reflected in the counter over there in the right-hand column? They are not even close to each other! Most of the hits recorded by SquareSpace are not counted by Sitemeter, and some of those by Sitemeter are not captured by SquareSpace. What is going on here?
• What’s behind the green door?!
• And, finally, I seem to have picked up a new reader in Malaysia. Whoever you are, you’re the furthest-away regular I have. Thanks for finding me!

So: here I am, all moved in and headed in the direction of being “settled.” I’m almost two months into the new job, and I’m generally finding my way around Marin County better and better all the time.

I’ve actually had a little time here and there over these last two weekends to see that leisure time is once again an occasional possibility. I’ve polished off a couple of novels sitting outside in my new lounge chair — so it appears that the stressful overload of moving and totally changing my life is about to be a thing of the past. (That is to say, things will now likely settle into more manageable and normal levels of work and health-related stress.)

However, as the perpetual adrenaline rush associated with these last few months of frenzied activity goes away, I’m recognizing a feeling of being a little on edge. Actually, what I’m experiencing is a renewed sense of emptiness. For here I am, in a new state, in a new town, in a new job: completely alone.

The silence is eerie. The phone keeps not ringing. The space once occupied by best-friend Katrina is presently a void. Her unique ring tone goes unused and unheard. And, the presence of unstructured time allows for old and familiar emotions to creep in. Feelings of loss and sadness are now my constant companions.

Still, the (ten-year-old) question remains: is she gone forever this time?

Round and round she goes, where she stops, nobody knows…

Soundtrack Suggestion

Unrequited love’s a bore, yeah,
And I’ve got it pretty bad.
But for someone you adore,
It’s a pleasure to be sad.

Like a straying baby lamb
With no mama and no papa,
I’m so unhappy, yeah…

But oh so glad.

(“ Glad To Be Unhappy ” – Mamas and the Papas)

Here is an excerpt from a short missive that came in by email from a reader in Oregon…

There is a lot of humor in your blog. I hope you can see it. Is it not supposed to be funny? …Thanks for sharing all of your hopes and fears with the entire world … You sir, are in a word, a handful . I mean that in the politest and most complimentary way. Your world view is so prickly (ala Mark Twain)…

Yes, yes, yes (!) dear reader…I hope you are able to share in the soap-opera humor that seems to be my life. I know I perhaps come across as deadly serious at times, but I suspect that those of you who know me best can “hear” my voice and know that there is mostly a lightness there…trying to take things as they come, turn them upside down, and then talk about them…in an embarrassingly public way.

Thanks for reading!

It was exactly two months ago today, July 2, that I arrived here in California to take possession of my apartment in Larkspur. I started packing up my boxes for this latest move the first week of June, and have been basically living from cardboard containers ever since…until last weekend, that is. I have finally unpacked the last of my things, put the artwork up on the walls, and reorganized my rented storage area. And I’ve had the apartment thoroughly cleaned by my new housekeeper for the first time. As of now, I’m officially “moved-in.”

I would like to say that I’m “settled” (as in: “Jim, are you all settled in yet?”), but that’s not really the case. There has been too much stress associated with moving to a different state and taking on a new, high-stress job to (in all honesty) say that I’m settled. But, being unpacked and moved in feels like good progress along that path, I must admit.

To be “settled,” I think I need a little more time to adjust culturally. The change I’m experiencing by moving from an ultra-conservative, economically-depressed community in southern Oregon to a liberal county with the highest per-capita income in the U.S. has been mind-blowing, to say the least.

And that’s not to say I’m not enjoying it here. Because I am. Believe me, living in a place that is on the liberal cutting-edge is quite refreshing. What an incredible relief that I’ve found my way here!

But I experience a good deal of preoccupation, and some degree of angst, about how different this place is, too. For one, I am continually reminded of the high cost of living: everything costs more here, and sometimes it’s way more expensive. Just this morning I went to the nearest car wash, for example, and paid $19.99 for the most basic service they offer. In Eugene, at what I think is the most pricey car wash in the city, the cost is less than half of what I just coughed up today.

And, of course, it’s the first of the month and I just wrote out another rent check. It’s a good thing I finally received a full-month’s pay: my rent is roughly two and a half times of what it was last year. Really, I can’t think of one thing that costs less here.

Additionally, one of the most interesting things that has been on my mind in the last few weeks, as I’ve been looking around trying to pay attention to my surroundings, is my perception that the residents of Marin County are a considerably better-looking lot than I’ve been around in recent times. I started out by noticing the much larger number of people sporting sun tans than are evident in rainy, cloudy, cooler Oregon. And then, as I kept reminding myself that “you can observe a lot just by watching,” I noticed that it wasn’t only the tans, it’s that people seem to look more attractive, more together, and just plain healthier here. For example, it’s my perception that there are significantly fewer obese folks around me now than there have been during the last few years.

So, it was with great interest that last Thursday I came across an MSNBC article that suggests ZIP codes are surprisingly accurate predictors of obesity. As I was able to learn, “in a study published in the September issue of the journal Social Science & Medicine, University of Washington researchers found that adults living in ZIP codes with the highest property values were the slimmest, and those living in ZIP codes with the lowest property values were the fattest.” The data presented in this study are entirely consistent with my informal, non-scientific observations of Marin County residents. With property values here that are literally off-the-charts, according to the UW research people here should be slim(mer). And they are.

My one last observation (for today, anyway) about the culture here is that the attitudes of Marin County residents tend toward elitism, entitlement & privilege. My opinion is that these Mariners know they live in an enchanted place among the rich and beautiful…and somehow these conditions give them a rather special place in society. It’s not really anything specific that anybody says…it’s just that the sense of entitlement here is palpable.

I imagine that once I’m more accepting (i.e., less judgmental) of the cultural values I’m discovering, then I’ll consider myself more “settled.”