The Head & The Heart

I think what makes me so interesting to other people is that I usually make decisions with my heart.

If you look back on all of the crazy, spur-of-the-moment decisions I have made, the majority of them have been a head-vs-heart battle where my heart has come out victorious.  Let's face it...if I paid more attention to my head then I probably would never have traveled so much.  It just doesn't make sense.  I've been asked why I don't invest my money and why I don't use my savings to get ahead on paying off my loans.  I've been stared at like I'm some hairy, spiny creature - let's think "Metamorphosis", people! - when I informed someone that I was definitely traveling alone and that I preferred it that way.

"But what are you going to do in the car?"
"I figured I would drive in it."
"Yeah, but aren't you going to get lonely?"
"I think it'll be good time to get lost in my mind."

I don't really have a problem with making decisions this way.  I've made the small decisions of skipping class to hop over to North Beach for the best margherita pizza on the west coast with an equally-crazy friend or of denouncing sleep to jump in the Lafayette reservoir at midnight surrounded only by cloud-covered stars and whatever small creatures roam the Lamorinda hills in the dark.  I'll admit to taking a trip because of some romantic notion for someone that has been on my mind even though I know nothing will come of it except for a glass of pinot and some good conversation.

In 2008 I refused to go to Spain for an entire year because I knew it would make me despise the US too much and would probably turn me into one of those people who has spent so much time abroad that he or she not only lives in the US but whose mind is lost in another world...I mean, we have all met North Berkeley people, right?

Sometimes you can just know that your heart is slapping you on the back of your head. I was prepared to study abroad in Mexico City upon my return from Madrid but, on the very last day, I hesitatingly called my parents and told them that I wasn't going.  I knew that my dad and I thought of traveling differently when I told him, "Because I know that if I go to Mexico then I won't come back."  He couldn't understand my thought process with this decision because I obviously had never been to Mexico.  Well...sometimes when your heart aches you listen to it.

This is probably why I have felt not so "at home" here in New York...or, at least, why I haven't yet.  When I started my trip I didn't have too much in mind on how I wanted it to turn out.  All I wanted - getting down to the simplest explanation - was to find where home was.  When people asked where my last stop was going to be I had no answer.  It even started to get annoying.  Did I need to know an exact location?  Then what is the point in wandering?  What is the point in taking my time and getting lost?  What would happen if I was happier in Oklahoma than in North Carolina?  I was trying to follow wherever my heart was leading me because I didn't want to do the "logical" thing.  I wanted to do what was so purely and simply right for me.  I wanted to be where my heart ached.  I no longer wanted to sit on my bed and feel my chest weep for another place in the world.  I wanted to be in that world where I was supposed to be.

New York was not my dream.  You hear of millions of people breaking away from their hometowns to run off to "The Big Apple" where, if you work hard enough, your dreams will come true and you'll be enormously successful and you can do something new every day and be living the true "city life." Some people were born to live in New York and make sure that they do whatever it takes to get here.  Some people try for years and never show up and then spend the rest of their life regretting the fact that they didn't try harder.

Maybe I'm stealing someone's dream.

It gives me a horrible feeling in my stomach to know that I ended up in New York on a whim and have had incredible luck since arriving.  Yesterday was exactly two months since I had set out on my journey and I already had an apartment with three great girls, more friends than time in the day, and the exact job I wanted from before I even showed up in this city.  But I never dreamed of any of this.  This is not where I thought I'd end up when I started my trip saying, "I'll know I'm home when I get there."

Maybe I feel that because I sided with my head and not my heart that my trip kind of failed.  It's turned out to have led me into an excellent place in terms of an apartment and what I want to do with my career but it certainly did not feel like home when I pulled up.  I think I know where my heart would have chosen if I had not consulted my head...

But in the end I - for the first time in making a big decision - used my head and decided that it would be more beneficial for my career if I ended up in New York.  If I had gone where my heart fell in love then I could've still had a good career but it would've stalled.  Here I can move it up to a better vantage point before fleeing again.  That's how my head thought.

I'll enjoy my time here.  I'm going to learn more than I ever thought.  I'm going to see places that I never imagined I'd go to.  I'll make friends with people that I wouldn't have met otherwise.  This is going to be great so I expect to not see a single email or receive any call from anyone trying to give me a pep talk and encourage me that this is where I want to be.  I know where I want to be.  I'm in New York for my head - which is great - but my journey is not over.  I'm not home yet.  I guess this will just be a trip that happens to be longer than the two months I had originally planned.  I'm still on the journey.  I'll get home.