After six years, Amanda and I are leaving the Ithaca area! By April 21st, any posts (or lack of posts) will originate from the Fear of the Blank Page's new home office in the Cleveland, OH area.
Cleveland: Because I hear it rocks
We are both excited to move. Friends and readers should have already known that we were getting tired of Ithaca. This should not be a surprise, but we do not leave Ithaca with anger (Well, at least not an unhealthy amount of it) in our hearts. Expect a post about why we were so desperate to leave soon, but I need to publicly announce that I am particularly stoked.
Yes, it's Cleveland. It gets ragged on more than New Jersey and the French combined. Yes, it has problems (Just like Ithaca!), but I tried the small town life already. I thought I could get into it, but I want to live in a big city. Live in Ithaca long enough and everyone starts to seem familiar. It's like one huge college campus where everyone moonlights as something else and the six degrees of separation get shorter and shorter. In college, you might make yourself into an ass by slipping a Valentine's day card under the door of the girl you had crush on. She never replies and when you get over it, three semesters later, she becomes your chem lab partner! And she has a boyfriend. WHO IS HUGE!! But, then you both graduate and become blips on each other's Facebook feeds*
In Ithaca, however, your manager from one job becomes your waitress at another. The Quad Americano guy becomes Mr. County Legislator. The reporter interviews your boyfriend's boss and the tax preparers never tipped.
There is some neat whimsy to all of this. Networking is important, but in Ithaca you can see an ad for a job and think "Awesome. I know I can get this, except that when I bused tables at Moosewood I spilled Peach Spritzer all over this dude."
More on all that later. I am also looking forward to living in a town where being an environmentalist doesn't mean constantly defending yourself from others of the same persuasion. I could never win the laundry list pissing contests of sustainability in Ithaca. Since we rent, we could never install a composting toilet or triple planed windows. We can't afford a Prius and thinking about Greenstar upsets me. Hence, in the eyes of Ithaca, we were horrible people with all associated cartoony stereotypes. Environmentalism means something in the outside world and isn't that what we are trying to protect.
Oddly enough, one thing I am looking forward to is major league baseball game. It could possibly be the Ithaca Fever breaking, but it is something we could have never done in Ithaca and now we have the opportunity. Maybe it's cathartic. Or, maybe, its because Major League** enthralled me as a child. Regardless, I need to work on my Go Tribe and my Fuck the Red Soxs.
PEACE!
* Who am I kidding. She never friended me!
** Jobu needs more rum and cigars to take fears from bats! And moving truck!
1 comment:
Geez, it takes you leaving for me to write to you again. I'm sorry you're going; I always enjoyed reading your contributions to the Tompkins County Weekly, so well written and thorough. (And I liked finding a name I recognized as a byline -- I haven't gotten tired of meeting the same people, and I hope I never do.) I certainly wish you all the best in your new home. I'll keep on reading the blog.
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