Where to?

I've been living in my apartment for nearly a year. It has served me well, despite being entirely too far from my current job. I want to move soon and have yet to decide where in the Cities. Somewhere cute, somewhere convenient, somewhere old, somewhere with orange ceilings.

Invariably, when I start to think of changing apartments, I think of all the apartments I've had before, in all the cities I've loved (and loathed) before. And such thinking makes me start to wonder if maybe I should be exploring apartments in other cities, other countries, places to surprise or inspire myself. I'm not bored here, or unhappy. But some part of me feels the need to stomp around somewhere new. Moving every couple years became a habit and I suppose, seeing as I've lived here for two years come June, my body is simply feeling the itch.

I have wondered if that drive, that need to go "somewhere else" and do "something else," would go away or fade once I found some magic, happy place. But I think that's where the searching comes from, not out of any unhappiness, but out of finding comfort. I start to worry if, in becoming happy, I've also become lazy.

C.S. Lewis has a brilliant quote in 'Til We Have Faces, "It was when I was happiest that I longed most...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing...to find the place where all the beauty came from." I don't like to think I suffer from a grass-is-greener problem, constantly seeking something "better" as compared to what I feel my experience currently lacks. Because I don't think my need for change and new perspective is a search for "better" as much as it is a search for something new, different, unexpected, beautiful.

I spoke with a friend about this once, a friend who is much less prone to uprooting herself (in the physical sense). When I worried aloud that perhaps there was something exciting out there that I was missing, some country I would love living in, some river I should fish in, some job I should attempt and probably fail at, she wondered back ,"Have you ever lived somewhere without an expiration date? Why can't that be an adventure, too?"

Every place I have lived since graduating from high school has had a deadline. Virginia ended after college. Morocco ended with the Iraq War. Kansas City was a hiccup, a time-killer while I applied to law school. New Orleans was never supposed to end but after Katrina, I'd be lying if I said I didn't have some idea in my mind that even that lovely city was not forever for me. When I moved to Minneapolis I expected to be here two, three years, tops. I could not imagine myself happy, long term, in a city that is not in the South. I just could not embrace the idea of investing in a city that could never feel like Home.

I still feel like that, honestly. I still can't picture living here for years. Can't imagine owning a home here. Raising a family here. But perhaps it is healthy and mature and becoming-an-adultish to experiment with not stamping an expiration date on a city that has done nothing but make me content. I love my job, love being near my family, love the Spring after months of cold, love my church, love some dear, new friends. And even if this is not a forever type of city, even if there is another city in the cards, perhaps it's okay to just let that come in its own time. Perhaps burrowing in, making a home here, doesn't have to be something I do while I wait for my Real life to begin, the one in the Real city, with the Real happiness.

This is real, too. Just new, different, unexpected, beautiful.