put me in your blue skies, or put me in your grey

(Blog Soundtrack: Devendra Banhart - At the Hop. Open it in a new tab/window and read along)

Went to a house party tonight.

I can't even tell you the last time I went to a house party.

I feel like maybe I've grown out of it a bit, that whole scene. If you want to know the truth,

(of course you want to know the truth. only ex-girlfriends don't want to know the truth),

I'm mostly okay with that.

See, I feel like I don't fit in quite so much anymore. It'd be easy to say it's the having-graduated thing, but I don't think that's quite it. It's nice to see all the people I haven't talked to in ages (maybe since the last house party, time out of mind) one last time before I go.

before you go?

Yeah, before I go.

I suppose this is as fine a time as any to tell you: I'm leaving town. Bailing out of this joint. Getting the fuck out of dodge.

High-tailing it from the Great White North to the American Desert.

I've taken a job offer in Phoenix, Arizona, a cool 2,100 miles away. I start in two weeks.

It's a pretty big step for me, you know. I'm trying not to think about all the things I'm leaving behind. Not even just the big things, friends and family and all that. That's another blogpost for another day.

Even the petty stuff. Furniture and heavy clothes and that winter coat I really like. A gift certificate at a ski resort that I never got to use, and my ice skates. A major league baseball team in the American League.

City streets that I can navigate in the dark. A car I grew up with. Canadian beer and the auto industry. Snow on the ground and a breeze that doesn't feel like a blow-dryer.

It's a big move. I know that, but that's part of why I'm taking it.

There's a lot of good in this whole starting-over business. I won't be able to come home much (maybe twice a year), which is certain to make me a bit homesick, but it's something I'll have to get over eventually. When my granddad found out, he told me "every person has to make their own path in life".

Well, he said "every man", but he grew up in a different time. I can afford to politically-correct it up for him.

He's right, though. As much as Windsor and Detroit have been good homes for me growing up, it's time I did something on my own.

The hard part is keeping it on the down-low. I'm a pretty modest guy, I like to think, so it's hard when everybody wants to talk about how excited I should be, or how this or how that. I'm not terribly used to being the center of attention quite this much. It's a bit unnerving.

I'll get it figured out, though. I'll be just fine, I think.

I don't know. Maybe. hopefully.

Do you think I might?

Thanks for the comments: Hayley, Meg, Montoya.

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