Seattle?

Returning to Seattle is like visiting an ex whom I dated for five years except that Seattle is exactly the same person I broke up with four years ago, and I am not exactly sure if I still like the city. There were reasons why we broke up and re-uniting is kind of weird. Memories flood the body, busing from Northgate to Ballard, walking the Ave and moving from Capitol Hill coffee shops down to the Space Needle. I'm amazed how little the city has changed. Very little has closed (exception my favorite bookstore). All the old restaurants, stores, and supermarkets still exist. Bus 44 is still a mix of college students and the homeless.

It is a city of past memories, of a younger Jennifer who feels nostalgic for the past but can't see Seattle in her future. She loved Seattle and who she was as a student in this cool hip healthy exercising city. But now? Now... she feels old. She feels out of place. She feels Seattle has remained the same, and she has just gotten older with a desire for something new, a new adventure. She doesn't feel the desire to live in the past of a younger Jen.

Maybe it is time to try making money. Is that an adventure? Instead of picking a place for an adventure, try what the rest of the world is doing? Working a nine to five? With no passion to guide her to a new place, no questions she is trying to answer about herself, maybe it is time to just give up, settle down, and put money into her Roth IRA.

Questions of self-discovery have always led her from place to place, from jumping to one dream to the next. It started with college. What will it be like to live independent of her parents amongst a minority group of the USA? Then, the question is she a city West coast (Pacific Northwest) girl? led her to Seattle. Africa helped her answer the question will she be able to thrive and enjoy living with only the basic necessities of life without modern conveniences? Currently in China she is discovering, is she Chinese?

At 33, she feels like she has run out of questions to lead her to the next quest. Instead she is left with the natural life progression of an American citizen, job, house, life partner, family, retirement. Will her next adventure be work, feel tired, flop in front of the TV, dream of retirement when she'll be free again?