Back to Basics – Sort of

So I’ve neglected my blog for a month.  I can’t help but notice that I have less of a venting point, but also that my creative energy is rearranging itself.    Kentucky is busier and different than I expected.  While I’m fully content to mock the Florence Ya’ll water tower, I’m less comfortable with some of the incidents involving things like,  say, finding a gun in the Walmart parking lot.  The people I work with are pretty cool, but I feel as though I stick out, and it’s not comfortable.

Today, I came to a strange conclusion about what was getting out of life.  While I do undoubtedly still desire the life style of Manhattan, where life is scheduled down to the last minute, and business and pleasure are semi indistinguishable,  I’ve once more realized that most places in the world are not like this.  While there are some places like NYC, D.C., London, and Tokyo, most places are some variety of homogeneity.   People get up, they drive to work a certain way, they get there at a similar time, they eat in the same places, they go home around the same time, eat dinner, putter around, and go to bed to be able to run the whole cycle again.  Some people will disagree with this, but this is what most people do.  You pepper it up with some trips to the library, a couple of stops a week to the supermarket, and an occasional night out, and most of the next 40 years is mapped out.

I’ve now lived and worked in two places that weren’t my hometown.  The differences between Manchester, New Hampshire and Florence, Kentucky are worlds apart.  They don’t share the same supermarkets, movie theaters, culture, or social behavior.  Their night life is certainly different, and neither of them is like where I grew up, Albany, New York.  All of these places had their pro’s and con’s, and Kentucky won’t be a fair evaluation with the social structure that it has thanks to the large number of college kids hired on for co-ops.  The thing I guess I find, is that if I were to look at what I miss about Albany, areas like Saratoga and Lake George, my family, knowing things like the back of my hand.  Skiing and a permanency.  I suppose if I was to live in suburbia, Albany really had everything I wanted, and I just didn’t know it.

I know that I can’t go back to what I had.  I recognize that high school is over, and soon enough college will end.  I have a lot of things I still want to accomplish before it’s all over.  I know that I have regrets I’ll never forget, but every day I strive to get a little bit better.   I suppose it’s time to take stock again and try to figure out whats next.