The Travler Moves On
Originally published at Durosia.com. You can comment here or there.
On Thursday, I came home to an empty couch and a lot more floor space than I've had in a while. My buddy Josh, who's been staying with me for more than a year now, finally had enough going in his favor to continue his long-paused trip.
When he first rolled into town, the weather was awful and it took him a week or so to dry out. Such is the challenge of a cross-country motorcycle trip. Aiming to not leave under similar circumstances, his exit was postponed about a week from what he had planned. In that time, another mechanical issue or two came up with the bike and he found some good deals on a few other things he had been look for.
He left me with a new wireless router and a set of movies I'd been putting off buying for years.
Josh has done this stint of couch-surfing infinitely better than I did back in 2003.
I stayed with one group of friends for about nine months and another for three or four, plus a bunch of time back up at my parents' place in New York. During that time, I made no money until I finally got around to going through a temp agency. It's one of the reasons I'm in the sticky financial situation I'm in now.
I also didn't have a distinct destination in mind when I left my job with the newspaper. Well, at least not anything after DragonCon that year. It was only because my car broke down (the first time) in the DC area that I decided to stay here. That and I knew a good bunch of people (many of whom I don't see all that often these days)... but mostly because I figured "If the car likes it, it's good enough for me."
Josh is heading, eventually, to Seattle. Laura, his lovely and talented girlfriend, has been there a little longer than he was here. He has a lot of motivation to finish his trip.
I'm still in the middle of mine.
And in that time I've been "in the middle" I've set down some pretty decent roots in the DC area. I know a fantastic bunch of people (and meet more all the time). I've finally gotten into the vague area of "career" that I probably should have been shooting for since I graduated college in 1998. All in all, I'm pretty darn happy.
Most of the time.
Over the past year, I've been made aware, through numerous venues and experiences, of just how quirky I am when it comes to a lot of things. Living alone, it's easy to lose site of that. With someone else around all the time, sharing the same space and meeting the same people, the contrasts begin to stand out.
These quirks aren't all bad things, but some of them (now that I can see them clearly) annoy me a bit. Which, of course, means it's time to work on fixing them.
This time of year is good for that. It's the end of one hunk of a cycle and the beginning of another.
In my apartment, I'm taking advantage of the newly re-opened space and sorting through a bunch of boxes that have been hastily moved and filled and re-filled at various times over the past few years.
In my head, I'm doing the same thing, on a much deeper level.
When it's all done, everything will be better--on the outside and on the inside.
For now, though, the couch is mine. At least until the next friend in need of a place to crash shows up.