How to change your life

            Sometimes you can watch your life change right before your eyes.  There are many reasons why this happens, and oftentimes this event occurs hand in hand with tragedies.  But in the winter of ‘07-’08, I watched my life change after I made the decision the change it. 

I always knew I would leave New York City.  I could never imagine myself raising a family there or living the rest of my life there.  Towards the end of college, it was not just “knowing” I would leave, but really I wanted to leave.  New York and I always had a love/hate relationship.  I loved New York.  I loved living there and experiencing everything New York had to offer.  I loved the experiences it gave me, the lessons it taught me, and the secret beauty it held hidden in its nooks and crannies.  New York is a beautiful, amazing, fascinating place.  It’s mind boggling to think about how the city functions, how closely everything is tied together, and how little you can know about it.

But I hated it too.  I hated how fast everything moved, and how little time there was to get things done.  I think there is some sort of bend in time and space centered on NYC which makes the days shorter.  There are literally less hours in the day there.  I also hated how lonely I felt there.  In the most compactly crowded city in the US, people don’t interact with each other.  They don’t smile at you on the street or say hello.  They think you’re weird if you even make eye contact.  There’s all these people living parallel lives who never allow their paths to cross…never take a leap and interact.   

The dog park was different.  We were caged there together every day, forced to interact and socialize.  I think once I got a taste of the possibilities of a life where people acknowledge one another, I didn’t want to lose it.  But then I did.  And I was just another body in the ant hill that is New York City.  Go to work, come home, walk the dog (or go to class), go to bed.  Do your job.  Make your money.  Repeat.  I didn’t want to do it anymore.  I knew that the day I finished my Master’s program, I wanted out.  Not just for me, but for Lucy too.  She needed to be in a place where she could feel dirt under her feet sometimes.

During my college years, I spent a great deal of my time with my best friend from high school, who was also going to college in NYC.  Freshman year, when I decided I didn’t like my school, I spent weekends in her dorm room, making friends with her college friends.  After my first Brooklyn apartment, Sierra and I decided to get an apartment together.  We rented a tiny 2 bedroom railroad style apartment.  A year and a half later, Sierra decided to move to Seattle.  And she left.  Almost every time I talked to her, she would mention what a great city Seattle was and how much I would love it if I lived there.  I’d laugh it off, the thought of moving across the country inconceivable to me.  I couldn’t be that far from my family.  I couldn’t make that big of a change.  But after 2 years of persistent whispering in my ear, Sierra had planted a seed.

My last winter in NYC, I spent a lot of time thinking about what would happen next.  Do I go back to Rochester, a city that had very little to offer me besides my family?  I had visited Seattle by that point and had indeed loved it.  Was it really possible to move there?  All these questions floated around in my head.  What would I do with my furniture?  How could I afford a move like that?  What would I do when I got there?  How would I get a job?  What would my parents think? 

I went home for Christmas vacation with these thoughts floating around in my head.  I packed Lucy up in the car and drove the 5 ½ hours home to my parents, not seriously thinking I would ever make a move like that.  But it was a nagging thought.  During vacations at home, I had started taking long walks with my dad.  My parents had 2 golden retrievers at the time that my dad would walk regularly.  When I'd come home with Lucy, we’d take Sadie, Abbey, and Lucy out tromping through the snow to get their exercise.  It was on one of these walks that I mentioned Seattle to my dad.  I was simply talking through my thoughts about my next steps in life, and my miscellaneous thoughts about this city across the country.  I jokingly mentioned how hard Sierra had been working to convince me to move out there.  And my dad listened.  I remember very distinctly a point in the conversation when my dad looked at me and simply said “It sounds like you’ve already made the decision.  Now you just need to do it.”  He pointed out that furniture is just things.  Sell it, buy new stuff later.  He told me I’d find a job.  He told me that he wanted me to be happy, and if being happy meant being across the country, that he was ok with that.  He’d rather me be happy and far away than close by and sad.

As soon as he said that to me, it was like life moved into a different gear.  From that moment on, I watched it change.  I watched me change.  My dad was right.  I had made the decision.  I just hadn’t realized it.  And I needed my mom and dad to be ok with it, to tell me I should do it.  It felt like my heart started beating that day.  Like I had been living on auto-pilot for so long and now I was alive again, making my own choices.  I would move to Seattle for me.  And for Lucy.

This new-found feeling of life and living also played a large role in my taking the leap to start running.  I went back to New York after New Year’s and was ready to change my life.  I didn’t want to just change my location.  I wanted to change me.  When I looked in the mirror, I wasn’t happy with what I saw and I wanted to change that.  I think that may be why running first occurred to me.  Not only would I have a quicker way to run down Lucy’s energy, but I would also be making myself a better person.

Months later, just before leaving for Seattle, my good friend Lauren (who photographed all my apartments as a going away present) told me I was different.  She said that ever since I made the decision to leave New York for Seattle, my whole demeanor changed.  I was motivated, I was happier.  And she was right.  I had changed.  I had watched myself change.  But I wasn’t done yet.  I had so much more ahead of me.