This summer I spent a lot of time reflecting on what I don’t want rather than what I do want for my life going forward. I am not sure if that is the best method. I hear a call through the ether(net) telling me it probably isn’t. But since I change my mind daily on what I do want, now that my life has changed so drastically and the road is open to me, I am finding it easier to cross things off than to add them.
I went to Arizona to explore, to house sit, to try and figure things out.
Even in the desert I found myself near the water.
I would drive to Chandler to this coffee shop (shout out Coffee Rush and baristas that always lifted my mood there) and I would drink my iced chai while looking out at the palm trees and man-made pond, and wonder if the condo buildings across the water were a place I would desire to live, or imagine if someone there needed a house sitter next summer, would I want to be that person?
I went to Tucson and found it charming and more appealing than Phoenix, but did I like it because I was in a million-dollar home, with one of my favorite people, and a cute Boston Terrier (my favorite kind of dog), and because it was summer so campus and the art district weren’t loaded with traffic?
I went to Prescott, a town I haven’t been to since I graduated college and found it more like a dream or déjà vu. I have so many memories there, and yet it was so different and not a place I knew how to be from anymore.
I played board games with strangers, protested, sat by the pool, freelance edited for half a dozen writers, drove all around looking at different towns, volunteered with a lit journal, and had the best time going to a Diamondbacks game with a friend I met on the internet (spoiler, I didn’t get murdered).
When I drove back to Minnesota, I knew more things I didn’t want, but hadn’t made a lot of progress on what I do. When I got here, I did some very Minnesotan “up north” things with the lovely people I missed while across the country.
Every day I walk by the lake and think of the desert. I appreciate both regions because I am a Scorpio, a water sign. According to astrology, I also like Desert because it is all about exposure: nothing extra survives, everything is stripped to essentials. I feel I live my life that way most of the time.
Over the next six months, I will start to figure out what my plans are for next summer, which region I may want to housesit in, or if I feel I would like to permanently relocate somewhere else. Is that something I desire now, or do I want to become even more nomadic?
What have you been thinking a lot about? What do you not want?
Right now I know I am happy to be in Minnesota while missing the desert terribly. I always miss the places I am not.
