Fiona Apple once sang, “But I’m good at being uncomfortable, so I can’t stop changing all the time.”
A few weeks ago, I decided to leave St. Louis, put in my two weeks, move out of my apartment overnight, couch surf through mover’s limbo with all my shit and Little Orange Cat (creativity abound in that name, I know…), drive home to Illinois, and it’s finally starting to hit me that I’m leaving for Spain TOMORROW.
Life has been so insane the past few weeks that I haven’t really had time to just sit down and even think about moving… again. I just moved to St. Louis this past August, and now I’m moving to Spain for three months with a rusty grasp of Spanish, no real thought of how I’m going to make money, and not knowing anyone but my sister.
Still, it’s the right move for me. It really is. Fiona hit the nail on the head, and I am a full-blown change addict. It didn’t help that to me, living in St. Louis was like being being at dinner with someone that you really WANTED to like, but couldn’t help noticing their little dealbreakers the whole damn date (“Jesus, how many times is this guy going to use the word ‘literally’ incorrectly…?”).
I tend to assign colors mentally to towns I’ve spent any real time in — maybe just because I would have loved to have been a painter in some other life. For example, South Carolina was green — everything was new, thriving, and just so alive. I remember my first night outside in Natalie’s backyard, barefoot in the dirt as music cut through the muggy air, fire blazing, people dancing, and I would swear that the air around me was vibrating, ripples of pure energy coursing through me. And it was smacked me in the face — that gratefulness of being exactly where you want to be and knowing that something incredible was just beginning. Something, some seed of a thought, some grain of an idea of what I might really want in my life was planted in me that trip, surrounded by that crazy circus.
Green.
St. Louis was gunmetal grey and brick red. Hard and toughened. People carried that hardness with them in a sense. I remember one time when picking up my friend Sierra downtown when she came into town from Columbia. I watched her run across the sidewalk, in a classic Sierra outfit (a hot pink jacket and pink boots), she sat down in my car and immediately said, “Wow, I wore the wrong thing for St. Louis.”
St. Louis just isn’t pink.
I’m not knocking St. Louis. From what I saw in my brief time there, St. Louis is filled with really good people who work hard and stay grounded. I appreciate that there are people pushing to expand the art scene on several different fronts. I met some people there that have had such a profound impact on me and how I’m moving forward in my life… I Don’t Know if they realize how much they’ve changed me.
But the longer I lived there, I noticed that while St. Louis is a city with lots of potential, but many people I met described landing here by chance and getting stuck in a sense. A lot of people affectionately joked with me that St. Louis was a bit of a black hole for travelers. It’s uncomplicated to live there — good people, cheap expenses, etc. It’s an easy city that is hard to leave.
It was easy for me to live there, but not good for me. I didn’t have to work hard, so I didn’t. I didn’t want to make decisions about my life, so I didn’t. I look back on my time in St. Louis and have regrets.
I feel like I have learned all that I can from living in places and waiting for life to happen to me. When I go to Spain, I’m going to study flamenco. I’m going to figure out how to live there comfortably. I’m going to absorb the culture and every experience I can squeeze out of this. I’m going to surrender to the fact that while I might hate structure and loathe routine, it really could advance me.
I cannot wait to go to Spain and refocus on what I love to do, my passion, my art… dance. I cannot wait to feel alive again, I’ve been hibernating far too long and I’m ready to thrive.
Here goes…
Starving Artistry 