this is my journal...

Four weeks from today I will be on an airplane headed back to the states. Stewart will be going back with me. Everything seems to be up in the air...

I don't think I want to live in Fayetteville anymore. With the Underground gone and in the way it ended I don't feel connected to that town anymore. I have some friends there and my parents are close by but other than that I don't feel the same drive or hope for the place as I once did. It is a small town with some small minded and well connected people and it is pretty conservative even though they would have you believe Fayetteville is some progressive utopia.

I left Fayetteville before when I was twenty-one for six years. It was hard to relearn everything and to be in a strange far away place (Oregon) but ultimately it was worth it and some of my happiest memories are from those six years. Some of my best ideas and choices came from that period. I learned a lot about myself and about how much I could push myself to acheieve my goals. I was a nervous wreck but it was worth it in the end.

So, this makes me think it is time to move on, to challenge myself again. This time I am forty. No point in being stuck somewhere when you're forty. I have made life choices that make it easier for me to move around than most. It still isn't easy but it can be done.

Do I want to live in another state in America? It seems like a bad time to be a woman in America, it actually seems more dangerous than ever. The politics are bad in America. The Bible belt seems to have expanded its reach. I can't just jump ship and come over here can I? It is more complicated than just moving over seas. Is this my home? Could it become my home? It is hard to tell.

It seems like I need a different planet at times.

There's more to it than this, and there always is.

ps. I loved the weather here today. I think I like extremes.

x.