Do You Know the Way to San Jose? (On Homesickness)

First off, before I begin answering the "WHERE HAVE I BEEN FOR OVER A MONTH" question (the short answer is "having a month-long existential crisis"), I'm gonna request you all listen to this classic song:

If you substitute NYC for LA, that's just about how I've been feeling for the entire month of November. I mean...

"Dreams turn into dust and blow away
And there you are without a friend
You pack your car and ride away
I've got lots of friends in San Jose
Do you know the way to San Jose?"

Let's back up just a bit, shall we?


It actually started in the beginning of November (I think the 5th or 6th?) when, feeling burnt out and depressed, I decided to treat myself to a movie. This in and of itself isn't a terribly big deal - the movie I saw was "Wonderstruck" which was very cute and you should all see it if you can. The movie is not what kicked off the big crisis but it was the beginning of it. The thing about the movie, though, is that a large part of it takes place in the American Museum of Natural History. AKA one of my favourite museums not only in New York City, but in the world.

AKA the place Sarah once described as being like walking into my brain.

AKA my dream job.

This beautiful behemoth of a building

Naturally this meant I went back and visited within the week.

But being there among the world-class exhibits and dioramas only hammered home that as much as I'd love to be doing that kind of work and working in a museum of that caliber, I'm not. Not even close. Sure, I volunteer at the Grange once a week, but I make my living working full time in dental, which is the same thing I did to pay my way through university back in San Jose, before I worked at Winchester.

I started wondering, "why the hell did I move here? What am I doing with my life?"

Back home, I'd had all these big dreams. I was gonna move to New York City! I was gonna get my master's degree, maybe even at Columbia, the school Alexander Hamilton graduated from, a top-tier university which just so happens to have a partnership with AMNH!

And a year later, where was I? Working full time in a job that requires no college degree (so what the hell did I spend all that time and money for?) that I don't even really like all that once. Unfulfilled. Depressed. Lonely, even. Sure, I've made friends here. And Sarah lives here too, which is important of course, but I had a much more vibrant social life back in San Jose that I'd left behind.

I began to think that the last time I had been happy had been back in San Jose. New York seemed like the glamourous party girl friend who you have fun with but who you know would betray you in a second. And San Jose seemed like the introverted friend who may not be as flashy, but you know she's always got your back.

And then I got homesick. Really homesick. Pain in the chest, unable to focus on anything else, bawling my eyes out every other day, unable to see the good right in front of me homesick.

This was made worse by getting not one, but two big pieces of news from back home (one bad and one good) that only seemed to hammer home that life was going on without me over there. And, yeah, I get it, that's how life works, but still, it kind of stung.

I know, I know, "nostalgia is a dirty liar that insists things were better than they seemed" and all that. Logically, I know that. This did not stop the emotions.

The Valley of MY Heart's Delight

I missed the tiny downtown with its buildings built low to accommodate the nearby airport. I missed walking my sister's unruly dogs through the foothills behind my mother's house. I missed going out in a t-shirt in the middle of December because it's still in the seventies. I missed my favourite Indian restaurant, and the way they always knew my order. I even missed my damn university with its labyrinthine bureaucracy and its habit of making people take seven damn years to get a "four year" degree. (Hey, the campus was pretty at least.) I missed my minimum wage job with no health benefits. I missed being stuck in traffic.

What I'm saying is that the homesickness was growing unruly and out of control. The more I looked at my current life, the more horrible it seemed that I wasn't at all where I had expected to be. I actually, at one point, strongly considered giving up and moving back home.

My sister actually talked me out of that rash decision, pointing out that I am going home for a week in late December for the holidays. I can re-evaluate how I feel when I'm there instead of freaking out while still on the East Coast which still doesn't quite feel like home at all times. In my dreams, half the time I'm still in California, after all.

What I needed to do was stop freaking out, take a deep breath, and look at what was really causing all of this.

Enter Sarah.

And thus the clouds began to lift

While I was in the middle of this completely illogical month-long meltdown, Sarah was going above and beyond in her best friend duties. Or maybe the gods were working through her or something. I don't know.

What I do know is this. Sarah correctly guessed that my sudden overwhelming desire to return to San Jose wasn't about San Jose at all. It was about me being terrified of the unknown, so terrified that instead of running towards my future and taking steps to secure it, I was running away from it.

(How does she know me so well? Sarah, what the hell?)

Sarah told me that if, in my heart of hearts, what I really truly wanted was to move back to San Jose and work at Winchester and write the novel I keep saying I want to write, then she would support me 100% - but she knows that isn't really what this was all about.

And wouldn't you know it? She's right.

(She also reminded me of all the stuff in San Jose I'd been running away from, and that my job right now is not my job forever, it's just a means of supporting myself until I can enter the field of my dreams.)

Sarah had also, coincidentally enough (and this is the part that may or may not be divine intervention), recently met a woman at the Union Square Holiday Market who happens to have worked with the Museum of Natural History through another New York City graduate program (one that's much more affordable than Columbia). They hit it off well enough that this woman gave Sarah an e-mail to pass on to me. I was able to set up a meeting with her to discuss options for my future.

I'm terrified, of course. But I'm done running away from my future. I'd like to start running towards it now.

Maybe in a couple of years I will be working at my dream museum. Maybe I won't. Maybe I will end up in San Jose again someday - I still am happy to visit it in a few weeks. But for now?

I'm not ready to give up on my New York dreams yet.

And so, my friends, I leave you with another classic song to close this entry out:

Not yet ready to give up being a part of it.

So here I am, not giving up.

-Nym

(P.S. Why are there no good songs about that New Jersey life? I guess "Do You Know the Way to Weehawken?" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.)