Back in Town: Surprise Twists

Not a photos-y/videos-y  update, but another navelgaze! Keeping the meat below the jump so you can ignore this if you're just here for the shiny stuff (which is absolutely the recommended route to reading this blog)!


I'm back in Boston and have to say I'm pleasantly surprised at how much I'm enjoying the return. There was some anxiety and stress going into it - this city holds a lot of hard, unhappy memories, both from the at-times-overwhelming stress of my grad program and from the past year of depression and relationship deterioration. I knew that this was the "smart" decision, but it was by no means my first choice. I'm really grateful for how it all turned out, though - like a few other choices I've made during this transitional year, I'm glad I stuck with the hard-but-healthy path forward.

And some of this change is absolutely stuff that was wrought during my time abroad. I feel a greater sense of exploration than I have had here before, in part I'm sure because I'm coming to the city with new eyes and a habit of looking. And I'm more used to taking inconvenience and dead ends as a matter of fact and adjusting myself to my circumstances. (This does not mean that Boston's civic planning can be forgiven its many ungodly sins, but I'm at least not taking it personally, which I think we can call the most infantile version of progress?)

But some of it is circumstance as well - after two years in Allston, it's an incredible relief to be in Jamaica Plain. A little further out from the city center, it's unlike any other spot I've lived here in that there's a real sense of community, of residents who have put down roots and invested in each other and their environment. This morning I went to a bakery for the second time in a few days (my stove is from the 1950s so I'm not quite comfortable firing it up until I get a tutorial from my landlord) and the owner recognized me; on my way out I picked up a brochure for the neighborhood's "open studio" art gallery program later this month. Neighbors smile and wave and let me pet their dogs (possibly the greatest thing to ever happen in the Boston metro area). A nice shift from the undergrad-heavy, trash-in-the-streets vibe of Allston.

I've also got a much better sense of structure and routine than I did during the overwhelming emotional and professional chaos of my comps year. And that's helping me figure out how to have a full, healthy personal life in tandem with an ambitious, productive year of scholarship and academic knick-knacks. Again: a nice shift.

All of these things keep me circling back around to the same thing, something I feel like I keep saying to my friends (sorry, friends!) - which is that I feel like me again. I didn't for a long time, well before the divorce. I'd felt adrift and alone and humiliated and stuck and sad. And those things still visit from time to time, but my core self feels present again in a way it hasn't since at least early 2015. And man, that feels tremendous.

In the year I've got left here, I'm pretty committed to doing my best to keep riding this wave of positivity and happiness, while knowing that there will obviously be stress and emotional setbacks as the academic year cranks into high gear and life moves past the settling-in phase. But I feel like in this year I've re-learned how to share things with my friends, how to accept and release frustrations, and how to take joy in all things, up to and including disasters.

That all feels great. That all feels new. That all feels like the future. I'm awfully keen to see what comes next!

Next up, a Copenhagen boat ride! Stockholm adventures with an amazing friend! The bourbon trail with another amazing friend! A sudden and destabilizing shortage of exclamation points!!!