commit to growth.

location: manlius ny

There is nothing like coming home to my parents house. It is as if all of my responsibilities dissipate and I am allowed to act like a child. Every time I come home I revert back into this lifestyle where I act 16; I walk around my house in my underwear, play loud music, let my mom do my laundry, rummage through the pantry every 5 minutes, and veg on the couch for hours cruising the internet and catching up on all of the Entourage episodes. It is almost as if I need to do this to remind myself that I can still pull it off. And up to this point in my life, my parents are still letting me get away with it. I absolutely love it.

There is something bittersweet about returning home last night. It was really good to enter a world of comfort, but it was also the official end of the Lake Placid era. After a long conversation with Nagle about moving/relocating, I find myself thinking a lot about this lifestlye I have started to take on: floating. I currently have no permanent residence.
This realization has inspired to me to glance at the past few years and the various places I have lived:

Freshman year: Holland Hall

Sophomore year: Pennsylvania Hall

Junior year: Bouquet Gardens

Summer '09: Bellefield

Senior year: 5th Ave

Some of Summer 2010: Blake Falls

Some Summer 2010: Main St. Lake Placid

7 locations in 4 years...plus floating in and out of my parents house.

I constantly dream about living in new places around the country and the world, but after chatting with Nagle, I'm kind of realizing it is easier said than done.

I am convinced that it takes about 3 months to get comfortable and to form your own community in a place. 3 months provides sufficient time to make friends, familiarize myself with the area, and establish a lifestyle.

But after these 3 months, it becomes slightly difficult to leave. It's easy to say I'd like to live around the world, but the realization I've come to is that it isn't so easy to uproot everything and leave.

Beginning with College, it was easy to be excited to go to school and start this new life, but leaving home was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I still feel sad whenever I drive away from my house in Lamp Post. There is just such a sense of security that looms with the idea of home. 

As for Pittsburgh, in May I felt like I had been stuck there for so long, so 2 days after graduation I drove out of there like a bat out of hell. I couldn't get out of there fast enough. But once I got home, I realized everything that I had left behind. I ended up driving back for 4 days because I needed to embrace it one more time. Pittsburgh was a wonderful city to go to school in. There was always something to do, and I found the best friends I could have ever asked for there. Picking up and leaving the life I had created there left me with strange feelings and the idea of closure on the city scared me a little. 

Uprooting a life anywhere stirs a lot of strange feelings. Leaving Lake Placid stirred up a lot of similar feelings to when I left Pittsburgh for the last time. I had created a home and network where I felt comfortable. I am guilty of labeling people as being "stuck" in a location, but I am starting to get a sense of how that happens. Once you start to feel comfortable somewhere, why would you pick up and leave everything? Everyone chooses to live their lives differently and remaining in one location can be an ideal situation for some people.

For reasons unknown, I have decided to take on a life that is slight of a vagabond...it forces me to always look forward rather than back. People keep telling me how lucky I am, and I know this, but I am still having a hard time figuring out how to balance keeping in touch with friends and family while constantly on the move.

Glancing through my pictures from my last adventure, I came across this one photo of the Perito Moreno Glacier in Patagonia, Argentina. I had no idea what to expect when traveling to South America solo, but it turned out to be one of the best experiences of my entire life. I am in need of this reminder as my departure nears.

Final thought: is the comfort zone really that comfortable....

Next location: Niagara Falls, NY

Quick throw back: Niagara Falls summer 2007 with some special ladies