I’m Moving to Maine

MY WORLD:

Over the past few years, whenever I go out of town, I start a conversation with myself about whether or not I could see myself living wherever I’m going.  Do you do this too?  When did vacations or work trips turn into scouting expeditions featuring Zillow searches and me saying things to an Oyster shucker I just met, like, “I keep thinking I should move to Maine.”  He responded with a “yeah, you should,” but what he probably meant was, “dude, I don’t know you or care.”  I went to Maine this weekend and told a lot of people that moving there was on my mind, and now I’m doing the thing where I return to normal life and talk myself out of doing something drastic.  But why?

I’m sure that part of the reason I think about moving as much as I do is because I know, deep down, that the VP and I probably won’t.  What’s the risk of thinking about jumping off the high-dive, when you don’t even know where a pool with a high-dive exists?  The process of moving to a new state is so daunting that considering it ‘basically impossible’ feels like an instinctual reaction.  Yeah, I’m in a better mood on vacation or when on a work trip that feels more like a vacation than sitting behind my desk does, but am I drunk?  (You? I mean, probably.)  

I’d never been to Portland, Maine before and I thought it was beautiful (HOT TAKES ON A MONDAY, Y’ALL!!!)  “It feels like I’m in a postcard,” is a line I think I said to 42 different people over the span of my three days in the Northeast.  (Yeah, I’m sure it’s been used before, but I still DIG that line.  SO BACK OFF!)  It smelled like the ocean with seagulls providing the soundtrack to hipster coffee shops, oysters, and people who seemed in better shape and more relaxed than me.

I’ve never been awed by the ocean, but I was this time…fuckin’ lighthouses are cool to look at from a distance and not go in!  (I did that!)  We drove to a more rural area one day, through woods and fields with little creeks and houses with decks where cell phone reception wasn’t very good.  Thankfully, though, it was good enough for me to run a Zillow search that revealed houses near creeks in Maine go for less than apartments with creeks in Chicago.  (See what I did there?  With the creeks thing?)  So I went into “well, could we actually figure out a way to live here?”-mode.

This consists of me telling the people around me “I think I wanna move to Maine”; me texting The VP that “I think I wanna move to Maine”; and me asking the guy who just rang me up for my first Maine bagel if I “should move to Maine?”  It’s a scientific and thorough fact-finding mission, one that has been honed over the past two years of being annoyed with Chicago rent prices along with OTHER PERSONAL ISSUES THAT I DON’T FEEL LIKE DISSECTING RIGHT THIS SECOND!

Usually, the people around me will toss a “I think I’m supposed to laugh here”-chuckle my way; The VP will say something along the lines of, “yeah? Do you think I could open a wine and cheese shop there?”; and the bagel man will pretend not to be annoyed with yet another out-of-towner idealizing a place where he works as a cashier for a local bagel chain.  (Does YOUR paradise include clocking in at a place called “Mister Bagel”?)  I’ll push back on the courtesy laughs from those around me.  I’ll remind The VP that just because she eating cheese and drinking wine doesn’t necessarily qualify you to open a wine and cheese shop.  And I’ll take to heart when Bagel Man says, “yeah, you should come here.”  (He’s definitely not saying that because it’s just the easiest thing to say in that moment.  HE REALLY KNOWS THAT I SHOULD BE IN MAINE!!!)

Then at night, I’ll have a few drinks, try to think of what I’d do to…ya know, make money in Maine, and come up with something attainable, like “writing something that sells for hundreds of thousands of dollars.”  (This blog ain’t it, buddy!)  BUT MAYBE, for a few minutes, it feels like something that could happen and then I get to imagine my new Maine life.  Living in a house by a creek with a deck means I could sit on a rocking chair in the morning and LOOK OUT AT A CREEK WHILE EXFOLIATING MY FACE WITH THE STEAM COMING FROM MY HOT CUP OF COFFEE!!!  From there, I could write for a few hours, before bringing my dog on a long walk into town to get a sandwich that, somehow, doesn’t make me as fat as a sandwich in Chicago would.  Oh, and my dog Belle?  She gets it, “can’t be a psycho in Quaintville, USA,” so she lets kids touch her snout without sending them to the emergency room.

After leaving the “sandwiches that are good for you”-store, Belle and I swing over to The VP’s wine and cheese shop to sample the new cheese (Kraft singles?!?!) she brought in and congratulate her on being named Trip Advisor’s “Best Place to Spend Too Much Money And Then Brag to People That You Love Supporting Local Business.”  When doggo and I return, it’s time for me to put my big, brown, comfy boots on to do my afternoon hike workout that leaves me sweaty and with, somehow, a perfectly full and manicured beard.  (That’s what happens when you get into hiking, right?)  We cook a dinner with wooden utensils and eat outside after telling all the bugs and mosquitoes to politely “leave us alone” because in Maine, the bugs listen.

There are people that live lives like this.  Do I know any?  No, but I’ve seen it in the movies and I’m not being facetious when I say that I’m beginning to fully realize that stuff in movies is inspired by stuff seen by real people in real life.  People have seen lives like this and written them onto screens.  And I have watched those screens before.  I’VE SEENT IT!

So why will I do what I always do after a trip, and spend the next few days talking myself out of what I just saw and felt and thought?  I have no problem with getting whiskey-drunk, but hopes-and-dreams-and-fantasies-drunk is a line I just can’t cross.  I’m aware this has been a rambling entry, but sometimes that’s what a blog should be.  And since this has already been all over the place, how about I just stop before talking myself back into the sobriety that includes whiskey but not the other more fun stuff?

OUR WORLD:

Heat wave > Polar vortex.

LETS HATE THIS AT THE SAME TIME TOGETHER:

When you make a can of chicken noodle soup that has been in your cabinet for a year and, after eating, you start wondering how the chicken in that can was still safe to eat…Is it actually chicken?  Yeah? Then how is it okay after sitting in a room temperature can for a year?

LETS LOVE THIS TOGETHER AT THE SAME TIME:

Tom Cruise doing Tom Cruise things will always be one of my favorite things.

JIMMY GAMBLES:

Yeah, I lost all my bets on The British Open and got to watch them lose while on a plane back from Maine.  The guy sitting next to me was wearing sunglasses the whole flight and, I swear, he was doing it so he could watch me rolling my eyes at Shane Lowry ruining my picks.

K, bye.