When I started college in 2001, I had never heard of blogging. I just knew that I wanted to start some sort of web page to document my new life and when I stumbled upon blogger.com, that seemed like the easiest way to do it. I’m trying desperately to hold onto any illusion of youth, so I don’t want to sound like an old-timer, but things were a lot different then. There weren’t any commenting systems back then, let alone tags, rss feeds or trackback. Things are a lot more standardized now, a lot easier to customize, and for the most part, a lot easier.
I haven’t exactly stayed abreast of the technology tide, but since combining all my old blogs at this domain, I’ve been slowly getting back up to speed. Last night I went through the last two years of posts and added tags to them, which categorizes them so that you can view the archives not just by date, but by subject. For example, you can see all the posts that deal with bachelor life, my time working at the sushi bar, POGs or *shudder* romance.
As I was going through the old posts, I found myself using a lot of the same tags. Slightly pointless came up a lot (apparently I didn’t know what to write about for a good portion of 2007), as did angst (apparently 2005-06 were not easy times). The one that I seemed to be using most often, though, was wanderlust. The desire to move seemed to be the most consistent theme of my life over these past three years.
For a long time I guess I’ve felt that sticking around one place for very long was the sign of some sort of failure on my part. Most of my highschool classmates just wanted to stick around our podunk hometown, or maybe move to a neighboring city. The overarching message of life in Dallas, Oregon seemed to be “Things are always the same here. You can’t ever escape.” Whole families were born, lived and died there, and it seemed that they did it without ever crossing the county line.
Now that I’ve moved away, I can see that there’s a certain kind of noble charm that accompanies the desire to live in the same place for generations, but in high school I only saw it as creepy, hopeless and drenched in ennui, and it’s a feeling that I haven’t fully shaken. Back then when people would tell me, “You’ll always end up back in Dallas,” I would remind myself that I wasn’t even born in Oregon. I had lived in three different states before I was five, so I figured I had traveling in my blood. It didn’t hurt that my parents were always taking us on trips around the Northwest and occasionally across the country. I figured it was simply my destiny to be nomadic.
Now I’ve lived in Orange County for six years, with breaks in between to make a zombie movie in Oregon, work food service at Mount Rushmore, court a lady in the Midwest, and study history and graffiti in Spain. I’m starting to plan whatever comes next, and I feel fairly certain that come 2008 I will be on the road again. Just knowing that feels great.
My dad, who shares my inability to sit still and has scaled serious peaks all up and down the Americas, wrote to me the other day. He has taken up sailing and mentioned his upcoming 850 mile trip from Annapolis to Bermuda on a 50-foot catamaran. Then he added:
“I will probably find out that the key to contentment is not climbing another peak or sailing away but learning to be at peace with where I am now.”
“Hmm,” I thought. “I guess the same is true for me. But not now — later. Later, later, later!! Travel comes first, and peace can wait.”
