The last leg

At the beginning of October we moved into our final apartment (well, my final apartment) in Seattle! It’s a basement apartment in a nice, residential neighborhood where the backyard is full of goats and chickens. I feel almost like I’m back in Virginia.

The S.O. has decided to extend his contract here for a time, which means that my Roadtrip East plans are shot. Instead, I’ll be flying home. I had originally wanted to take the train, but unfortunately the cost was a lot and the amount of time I would spend on our less than stellar transit system was prohibitive as well. So someday I will get to do a long train trip in the US, but this time is not it!

I’m not really sure how to process everything I’ve seen and heard and smelled and touched on this trip, and to be honest I don’t even know where to start. Being away from home has been hard but to be honest I’ve not been as homesick as I could have been, and I’m not sure if that’s just being older and more independent than the last time I traveled for this long, or if it’s the PNW. It is a truly lovely place, and I see why so many people have moved here. It doesn’t hurt that I’ve had the freedom to rest and to explore my writing for the past few months without worrying about finances, probably the first time in my life I have ever had that experience. While I’ve had time off to focus on writing before through circumstance or accident, there was always a looming threat of financial collapse to keep me distracted. I’ve always known that if money weren’t a factor my career choices would have been very different, but in some ways this experience has truly brought home that fact. I don’t think I would be the artist I am without everything I’ve lived, but I do wonder what my life would be like in a world where artists were supported and writing as a career wasn’t essentially a game of Russian roulette with only one chamber empty.

Anyway, all that said: support universal healthcare initiatives for the artists and small business owners in your life. Tax the rich. And embrace every spare moment of comfort this life offers you. I’m so grateful for everything I’ve learned and had the privilege to do over the past few months, both creatively and in terms of exploration, and I know that I will grow as both a person and an artist because of this journey.

Be well, my dears.