premature goodbye

new york city. what can i say? i've lived in chicago. i've lived in dublin. i've been to cities all over the u.s. and europe but so far no other place has screamed CITY, has represented what i always imagined a city should be, would be, like new york has. the first time i went to new york i was 21 or 22. since then i've been there 4 or 5 more times and it never changes. that feeling that i am in the one place that defines the word city.

i've never though of myself as a city person. for a time i even thought that i wanted to forsake all society and live in the middle of nowhere away from all people. seriously. but now... i don't know, maybe 3 years in chicago changed me. now it seems that i miss the stimulation of city life. the people-watching alone keeps me endlessly entertained. the culture. the museums. the variety in everything. all things you can't find in athens.

not that i don't love athens. it has it's own charm. it's own draw. living in athens is like living in a comfortable, predictable bubble of like-minded people. easy. simple. but i'm back to the point where easy and simple bore me. i need a challenge. that's not to say that my past two years in athens haven't been difficult. they have and i've learned a lot about myself. i've changed a lot, too. for the better? who knows? i do know that i am a different person than i was when i came back two years ago. essentially the same, but still different somehow.

in any case, sometimes you just know when your time somewhere has been used up. when a place, even one that you love, has nothing left to offer you. or what it does have to offer is no longer enough to make you stick around.

the conundrum that is athens- you feel forced to leave because life here is so easy. too easy. so you must go for the sake of your own self-preservation and in order to salvage what is left of the productivity that you set aside during your athens interlude. at the same time, if you leave you're always trying to resist it's pull- that call back to your comfort zone. somehow athens has become the closest thing to home that you know.

i'll miss athens. especially all of the amazing people that i've met and even what it's taught me about who i am and who i want to be. it has been a necessary stop in my life but it's getting close to time for me to move on. so this is my premature goodbye to athens.

i'm not going to michigan but neither am i staying here. blame it on new york city if you want but it was really only the necessary catalyst that kicked my ass into gear. so i'm going... where? somewhere new. a city? new york? austin? tuscon? san francisco? i don't know just yet but my deadline is january 1st. maybe january will come around and i'll still be in athens and i'll have to eat my words but the way i'm feeling right now i don't think that will be the case. in the meantime i'm going to get my act together and get some shit done. finally. hopefully.