On a bright, clear day, I take a walk with my present self
The adjustment from here to there and back again
On Friday, after my first therapy session in three weeks, I decided to walk a mile and a half to my next thing.
Yes, it was barely above freezing but I had on my big winter coat, a scarf, a knit hat, and over the ear earphones for some extra warmth. I felt a sudden, strong need to get reacquainted with my neighborhood, with the atmosphere of the city. I had to walk.
I’m back in New York. But, having only arrived back late Wednesday night, by Friday, I didn’t feel like I was back yet. And in New York City, the way you remind yourself where you are—who you are—is to walk.
I spent the final two weeks of December and the first full week of 2025 at my parents house in Spokane, Washington. I was sick for about two and a half weeks of that which, honestly, was fine. As I said in my last newsletter:
In Spokane, I don’t tend to do much walking. Beyond that it’s not a particularly walkable city, my parents’ live in a subdivision on the top of a great big hill. The view is gorgeous but I’m not hauling my ass down and, more importantly, back up what seems to me to be a nearly vertical road. My Dad often walks through the neighborhood for a bit of exercise but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t go completely to the bottom before coming back up. Plus, he only takes those walks after he’s spent a couple of hours saying, “Well, I suppose I should get my gear on.”
The house I grew up in was very small for four people. The house my parents live in now is at least twice its size so even if I remain inside for days, I still feel like I’ve traveled to different locations. Maybe I spend some time in the office editing a friend’s stories or re-launching my website. Then maybe I sit on the couch for a couple of hours trying to avoid being the person to make the decision about what to watch. Finally, I end the night downstairs in the guest room. That’s right. On a whole separate floor. When I was a kid, I always thought having stairs in a house (i.e. another floor) was the ideal. That’s how you’d know you made it. Granted, we had stairs in the house I grew up in but those stairs led to an unfinished basement, not a place where anyone did anything beyond skate on the concrete floor, play original Nintendo and, eventually, talk on three different instant messaging systems while watching America’s Next Top Model and writing their high school papers. No, these stairs in my parents house are to a whole other living space. Wow. And that Wow includes those times where I forget stuff downstairs and decide it’s not worth the trip to go get it because, well, who put these stairs here?!?!
So, I can move around my parents’ house and feel like I’ve made progress throughout the day but that, of course, is not really walking. My parents live outside the city proper so we have to drive to get anywhere anyway. Spokane is also, like many cities across the country, a driving city. I don’t drive. Well, I can drive. I have a driver’s license. But I haven’t driven in fifteen years and I don’t feel the need to start again during these short visits. Tell me when to get in the car, tell me when to get out. I won’t complain about not having to make decisions. I live alone. I make far too many decisions in my everyday life. In Spokane, I’m a passenger.
Yes, in the area where I grew up, I’m a passenger. And a visitor. I’m dropping in on the ever continuing, ever expanding lives of my family. It’s a game of catch-up in some ways. And sometimes that catch-up is just pretending like no time has passed at all. Like I already know everything that has and is happening. I get the gist. I understand the feelings. Why waste time rehashing things I can figure out on my own, from context clues and guessing? Some things never change anyway. There aren’t new rules to learn, there are set rules to remember.
There’s a lot of old familiar feelings when I’m in Spokane. Mostly, it’s feeling like I’m a little out of place. Like I don’t really fit this particular type of mold. I remember clocking that feeling starting in high school. It was the deep internal knowledge that I had a life to live somewhere else, somewhere out there. This isn’t a feeling that I particularly mind; it’s not unpleasant. I’ve never really minded it. I think it’s probably because it’s been a part of me for so long that to not feel it in this place seems impossible. For years, I walked around clocking places and times and people like memories. They were things that would be remembered, not things that would be part of my present, whenever I got there. That doesn’t mean I didn’t cherish those places and times and people in the moment, or that I don’t cherish them now. I just knew that my future self was already living in another place, waiting for my present self to join her.
It’s an adjustment though, isn’t it? Always. I was ready to go to my parents’ house for the holidays. I realized I hadn’t been out of the city at all since the last holidays and that is, I’d say, ill-advised. I was ready for a bit of a soft-landing, a little time away from reality. 2024 was a year. Although, I suppose that can be said about all years anymore. But it was. It was a year. I didn’t feel like I’d accomplished as much as I would have liked to in the year. I wasn’t where I thought I’d be—in the *gestures vaguely around* sense—when December rolled around. So, knowing, unequivocally, where I’d be for the holidays—in the physical sense—was a welcome sense of relief.
When this past Wednesday rolled around, I can’t say I was ready to leave either. As I get older, the reality of not knowing how long it will be between visits gets harder. It had been a full year since the last time I was at my family’s house. That wasn’t necessarily planned but that’s how it worked out. When the time between visits is so long, it’s easier to think it will be even longer between visits the next time, not shorter. Even though I’m relatively certain there will be more visits this year and not less (my brother and his wife are having a bébé so), life is unpredictable. We all know that’s true. It’s one of those things that is so true that any time someone mentions it, everyone laughs with both knowledge and disbelief. Leaving the relative comfortability of somewhere requires readjustment to uncertainty.
And when I feel uncertain, I walk. But you probably already guessed that.
Back late Wednesday, Thursday was a day in bed. I tee’d up my YouTube queue and I remained mostly horizontal. I ordered delivery from a place I hadn’t tried before that turned out to not be very good. I did a bad job of trying to combat my jet-lag. I really sunk into the in-between that day. Friday, I knew, I’d have to catch up with my present self. She wanted to take a walk.
The walk between therapy and my next thing was about 45 minutes through Astoria. I meandered my way past familiar sites, getting reacquainted with this life I’ve built here. Nothing really annoyed me. Well, I didn’t clock any of the familiar annoyances. It was just a nice, chilly walk on a bright, clear day with my present self in the city where I currently make my home.
Before I left Spokane, my Mom told me that she really hopes this is the year where everything falls into place for me. Obviously, I really hope that as well. That’s what I’m shooting for. That’s what I’m working for. That’s what I’m crossing my fingers for.
But, in all the striving and the struggle and the successes and the obstacles that are sure to come my way, I think it’s going to be most important to remember that, sometimes, I need to take a break and get in the passenger side of the car for a bit. When I’m in charge of the music choice, I need to pick music that probably only I like. I need to watch the passing, blurry tree-line as we go from place to place. And when we get to a place, I need to let the memories wash over me with all their sepia-toned sentimental bullshit.
And then, I need to get out and walk.
…after all that…
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