Where Am I?

So I've been staying at my parent's house for the last week after spending nearly three months in San Francisco. It's been quite the whirlwind. I guess I'm fairly good at dealing with change. - I just keep myself busy and avoid thinking about it. So I've gone to being at school for three months in San Francisco where I was generally so busy that I rarely had lunch before 3pm, to staying at my parent's house where the only exercise I get is walking from the upstairs to the downstairs and back again. And thanks to the blizzard of 2010, I was forced to stay inside. Technically, I'm now unemployed, instead of being student, and my future is a big blank slate. Well, okay, it's not that dramatic. I at least know what I want to do.. just have no idea where I'm going to end up.

I'm looking for account strategy jobs in both NYC and San Francisco. Right now, most of my possessions are at my parent's house in NJ. And then I have a plane ticket back to SF on January 15th where I have an apartment and a few of my clothes. But other than that, there's a big question mark. How much do I bring back to San Francisco? What do I actually need? Where will I work? What's better - having an apartment in San Francisco but few friends or job contacts? Or having no apartment in NYC, most of my friends and a slew of job contacts?

Right now, I feel like I want to be independent and move across country. I wouldn't mind starting fresh. But the longer I'm in the NYC/NJ area, the more I reach into my past instead of moving forward. Is this detrimental? Healthy? Then again, is my past really that bad? When I left NYC in the early fall, I had so many people I cared for and genuinely liked that it was hard to schedule time with everyone. I felt like I was always "catching up" with people instead of hanging out. And it took me five years to get to that point where all of the people I spent time with were those who I genuinely respected and were a joy to be around. When I got to San Fransisco, I automatically had a crew of 30+ people to hang out with on any given day when I actually had time to hang out. What's going to happen now that that crew is back in their homes, around the world?

Today, I had my things moved out of storage and into my parent's house. After living at my parent's house for a week, I finally have a desk to work on (my novel hopefully), I finally have adequate space to house my clothing and book shelves for my books. While I was in San Francisco, I felt weightless, freed by my three suitcases worth of clothing and freed by my mobility. But now, as I look around my room, I sit at the 67 pound desk that I once hauled up my 3rd story walk up on St. Mark's and put together. I look at the 6ft tall bookshelf that I dragged ten blocks and up five flights of stairs. And the IKEA bureau that I was so excited to also carry up five flights of stairs after not having a bureau for four years. The truth is, it's all cheap furniture. None of it matches. But it's mine. I look through my books and remember the inspiration they gave me and I think about how as a collection, they show who I am or who I want to be. But does all this matter? They're only material items.

Having the bigger room, my sister is now the proud owner of my former bed. It sits in her room with a few of my bookshelves and with my bedding. It's kind of weird. I feel possessive of it, like I want it to be mine after not having slept on it for four months. It feels like home. But who cares. It's only a bed. So yeah, here I am, caught between my past and on the verge of stepping into a new future with a clean slate. How appropriate as we approach the end of a decade and I approach the end of my twenties...