Last night I sat on my balcony with my laptop on my lap. I watched the sky darken – waiting for potential storms to roll through. West Memphis, the town just across the river, was under a tornado watch. I sat out there for at least 20 minutes. I wanted to write – mostly because I hadn’t written. I couldn’t think of anything to write about. Unfortunately, this is how I spend a lot of my time: waiting, scrolling, looking for a quick fix of information to catch my attention. I’ve been preoccupied with thinking about moving and jobs. I’ve been loosely following too many news stories about politics and the state of American affairs. I do a little freelance work here and there, mostly at the expense of my own reading and writing. I’ve also been spending a lot more time with my friend Stacy. We won’t get to hang out when I leave – if I leave.
The other day at the grocery store, I bought some packing tape. I’m about to start boxing up some of my stuff. Yesterday I had a job interview here in Memphis. Just as I’m about to move, I get an interview. I had to give notice to my apartment two months ago when the interviews were slow and I wasn’t getting unemployment. My gut said don’t make any moves until you land a job. Buddhism often suggests stillness when you feel the urge for movement. The financially prudent thing to do was to move and save money while I searched for employment – it all might take a while. It’s hard to see the long-term possible savings when I’m calculating the immediate cost of a move. The break even point seems to be between one and three months. If I remain unemployed for the next few months, moving will save me a good bit of money. If I get a job before then, moving twice – will cost me more than it would have if I just stayed put. To be clear, none of this is coming out ahead, it’s all about mitigating losses.
I forgot to buy peanut butter at the store. I looked in my pantry and the nearly empty jar of Kroger brand crunchy and thought, “I can probably do without peanut butter for the next two weeks, and I’ll be out of town for a few days…. it’s just one more thing to pack.” I hop on to the U-Haul site every few days and try to recalculate costs. Storage vs. shipping containers vs. loading a truck and doing it myself. Storage is gonna cost over $100/month. It’s an ok solution for a few months, but it might be cheaper for me to just load a truck and drive it myself – depends on how many months my stuff is in storage. At some point, I’ll also have to deal with reuniting with my possessions. I was hoping to avoid doing the move myself. I’m not a fan of driving the truck 1,000 miles, flying back getting my car and driving the 1,000 miles again. I’ve already done that craziness.
As I looked at the peanut butter and the semi-bare pantry I thought about boxing up the artwork that I never hung and putting away the appliances I probably won’t use in the next few weeks. I never really got to settle here in Memphis. I was supposed to be in my apartment for five months and then buy a place. I wanted to get a grill and a dog. I was going to make friends and have people over for backyard BBQs. Friends and family were going to visit. I’d take them out to my favorite dive bars and we’d try new restaurants together. I’d show people around my new home town. This is where I get coffee on the weekends and read. Here’s the Mississippi at sunset. This place has the greasiest, most delicious burger. This guy is one of the best harmonica players in town. In some ways I still feel like the college kid off on his own for the first time wanting to show off his dorm room.
I know my situation isn’t terribly unique. The world is upside down. A lot of Americans are struggling to concentrate. A lot of people have a sinking feeling of uncertainty. For me, the events of the past year or so almost seem absurd. With that absurdity comes a level of near numbness – or maybe indifference: “I’m supposed to move in a few weeks, but I might stay – ehhh I’ll figure it out.” I think we’ve all had to embrace figuring it out as we go… online learning for our kids, social interactions with our friends and family, navigating job losses, sifting through all of the contradictory information (about the virus, about the civil unrest, about the economy, about the election). In some ways, nothing seems stable or real.
Before moving to Memphis, I had planned on getting a compass rose type of tattoo with the word home and an arrow pointing away. I felt unmoored by the loss of my last relationship and was leaving a lot of things behind. For me, home is defined, primarily, by a feeling of complete comfort with another person. Secondarily, it’s defined by a sense of shared geography and community (place). If there’s a third level, it’s probably the physical structure and the things I choose to keep close by. Losing a relationship, and then my sense of place, and then my job, and now (most likely) my sense of place again creates a sense of homelessness… Thinking about the boxes that never got unpacked and the art that never got hung and the boxes that will get packed again, I can’t help but to long for a little bit of stability. And I chuckle as I write this… the irony was that I left for Memphis in an attempt to be the person I wanted to find, to become more comfortable with solitude, and to become a bit more free and comfortable with the unknown. I admired the bravery, fortitude, and freedom I saw in in my ex-fiancee and recognized the value in developing some of that in myself. I never expected to become the wanderer that she used to be. I never understood how tiring starting over must feel.
Last night, the weather held off for a bit. Stacy came over and we started out on a walk. Three blocks in to our walk, the skies opened up. We made our decision based on the information we had on hand – it was supposed to rain all day but had held off. We waited it out under an awning and then started to walk back to my place. We stopped and watched some of the soccer match in the stadium across from my apartment. There were almost no fans in attendance. This morning, as I write, I’m waiting for another line of storms to pass. And maybe that’s just where I am in life: waiting for some storms to pass; occasionally venturing out and getting soaked; ducking under awnings for a little shelter; and figuring it all out as I go.