17!

Groundhog Day has come and gone.

Apparently, we're gonna have an early Spring? I didn't see my shadow, but I did make a note that Spring starts on the same day every year.

Also, I think of the movie, where time loops and history doesn't repeat itself, but the present does. I'm not saying that I can fully relate to that, but it does feel like I've been living in a vortex of some sort for a while now. I say that because Groundhog Day is the date on which I first moved up, up, and away from the urban cultural hub of New Haven, Connecticut, and into the woodsly goodness. Yup. Seventeen years ago. Seventeen years in the Mount Washington Valley! Normally, if you have a skill, after 18 years, you 100% move the eff away from here. But, that's usually if you're finally 18, not a fully formed adult.

So here's the thing: I think I might've come up here for the wrong reasons, but I really do like it here, sorta. I mean, I think I've stayed here for totally different but also wrong reasons, and yet, I did manage to create an environment that is terrific for being creative- just not in the ways I ever expected.

I thought I'd be doing wild, colorful custom tattoos on collectors from all over the place-

Instead, I've become sort of spoken word improv monologist and a hell of a culinary creator as well. I doubt, sincerely, that I would've been half as dedicated to conversation or cooking, or telling 'jokes' and stories and speaking about my real life and the real meals and in between those two bookends filling in all the blanks with better people and better feelings and better results, really, than all the preceding years would've indicated were possible.

If it took a series of missteps and failures, and dissatisfaction, and dissolution, and resolution, and all the things except absolution to meet the right one, and see pure love given life and form and a big beautiful smile? Well, maybe things DO happen for a reason. I dunno.

In less abstract terms: I ended up here for a while. And in this last length of my term thus far,

all the elements of a worthwhile life have unfolded in front of me.

I guess I was just spanning time in this place because there was more I needed to do before I could even consider leaving or moving or making some serious changes.

Maybe that was just a long road to recognizing that I don't belong here, I just needed to be here long enough to notice that.

It took SEVENTEEN YEARS. I guess that's what's called being a slow learner.

The rest of my life is elsewhere...

That's a real plot twist, since my house is standing just three minutes away from my place of business, yet my people are all to a man one helluva drive southwards from here.

I might not belong anywhere.

I have no idea. I haven't been everywhere. The thing is, seventeen years later, it feels less like home and more like work than it did in all the years before.

I'm still grateful for the time I have been given, and I hope I've used it well. Whatever comes next, here, there, and everywhere, I'm sure it'll be spanned with equal intensity.