A Change of Scenery

The last few weeks have seemed like a perpetual writer's block for me. Whenever I have tried to sit down at home and write, something always has seemed to come up. I decided this morning that I wanted to do some writing this afternoon, and for the sake of avoiding the distractions which always seem to follow me at home I decided to try a little change of scenery. So here I sit in the library in my hometown, typing away while everybody around me appears engrossed in one book or another.

Oddly enough, this new location has me thinking all about changing scenery. This morning I was (finally) able to lock down an apartment to live in when I move up to Michigan in a few weeks. While I am undoubtedly excited to get that monkey off my back, it also makes more real the fact that the place I have grown up the last many years will no longer be my home.

When I graduated from Notre Dame a few weeks ago, I realized again how much I loved that place that had become another home for me. Yet so soon after having arrived there for the first time, my experience as a student was over. As much as I love Notre Dame and the campus and the people, and as much as I try to hold onto it, my relationship to it will never be the same. Whether I was ready or not, I was forced to engage in a change of scenery. To move on, one way or another.

In a few weeks I will be changing my location once again, moving from Ohio to Michigan to start a new phase of my life. Part of me isn't all that excited about the move and all that comes with it: leaving friends and family behind, being alone in a new place, having to rebuild (or recreate) people's perceptions of me.

But at the same time, I'm the sort of person who gets bored if I'm in the same place for too long. I need something to do, somewhere to be. I need there to be new things and exciting things and a variety of people and ideas and places around me. And with that in mind, I expect that this change of scenery will be good for me. I'll be forced to learn how to cook without burning down my apartment or ruining whatever I'm cooking. I'll be forced to grow professionally, becoming more confident in myself and my abilities to deal with co-workers and bosses and the job in general. I'll be forced to get to know new people, which is actually one of my favorite things to do. And I'll be forced to move on, both physically and emotionally, unable to cling to the place I used to call home too much or for too long.

I hope that this next phase in life will be everything I have imagined it to be, and more. I hope that I transition well and am able to integrate myself into my new community both quickly and seamlessly. But most of all I hope that this change of scenery will be good for me, with a new where helping me grow and change into the who and what that I'm supposed to be.

And so on...