Well…I finally did it. I made the voyage west hoping that the grass would be greener and hopefully find a place that I could call home. I love Omaha, however, I feel my urge to move out west was more out of a desire to make my own independent decisions, and hopefully come to find that the difference in culture out here compared to my beloved, conservative, Catholic city would be everything I had hoped for. As it stands now, things are going okay. Work is hard to find, and I haven’t had the chance or the finances to enroll in school, so meeting new people is difficult. As of now, we have met a few really cool people, but the weather and my lack of income and mobility have made it difficult to develop these new relationships.
I haven’t really been trying that hard to make better decisions for myself. The situation I was in while my brother and I were living alone in Omaha was so poisonous (Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed my independence in Omaha, but the finances and working situation I was involved in made things in my home almost unbearable) that I think I am just enjoying some time off to reflect and enjoy some more of my less marketable skills. Finding work is also difficult with a dirty background check, so aside from going back to Omaha at some point this summer to work things out and hopefully finding some assistance from an employment office here in Tumwater, finding work will continue to be an extravagantly difficult task. I have been considering applying for some apprenticeships in carpentry to work on residential furnishings; construction crews often don’t mind if I have hair on my face or holes in my ears. One of the more difficult things about growing up has been deciphering what I really want with my work in the long run. At one point, I had imagined that I wouldn’t do anything other than a professional job, but the more I think about going to Law School or getting a job in an office, the more the thought of living behind a computer screen in an office would drive me insane. This move has given me a lot of time to reflect and think about what I’m going to do…now if only I could just get around to doing it.
The things I have enjoyed most about Washington has been the nature and the culture. There are green trees everywhere I look, and I am only getting more and more excited about the Summer the more I hear about it. I am dying to play a game of frisbee golf again. The rain hasn’t bothered me that much, as I have always been more of a fair-weather guy, but it has certainly had an affect on my sleep schedule. I imagine that I will become more used to it with time and experience. The culture up here is great. From what I’ve seen, people here seem to be much more laid back, and somewhere west of the continental divide, people collectively are much more accepting and realistic about the way that people are, i.e. the Washington Senate is getting closer to legalizing gay marriage, food service workers that have facial piercings, incredibly large state systems set up to help people get on their feet with employment and assistance, and there is a huge amount of people that are down with the green, nevermind the ability to get a medical card.
I have missed Omaha. I think it’s hard for anyone to move away and not develop some sort of home-sickness. I miss my friends and my old job, sometimes even my slum of an apartment. Most of what I have to realize is that once I start making a greater effort to set some roots down here in Olympia, I will soon have a life of my own here that I will be excited to return to once I am done visiting my hometown this summer. Also, I will have the resources to have my old friends come and enjoy Washington the way I have.
I was originally going to record this on a webcam, seeing as how we live in the 21st century and all, but the quality of video that it takes SUCKS! So maybe once I get some more sophisticated technology I will start incorporating some media to the blog. I hoping to continue writing this as kind of a documentation of my life. The older I get, the more I realize it’s becoming harder and harder to keep my memories, let alone my thoughts together. I want to keep track of the progress that I am making towards personal goals, and also to capture the way I am feeling as I am making these new strides in my life. I’m hoping that I can keep up with it, so that one of these days when I am living in a swanky urban apartment, I can look back at the time I was still living in my Uncle’s house with a grand in unpaid bills from my old apartment and see how far I’ve come…so undoubtedly with my vast amounts of free time, I will be writing or posting something again soon…probably later this week.
