Moving On

I'm moving. Yes I am. Moving. I'm leaving the South and heading back up North.

When I started looking for a job my goal was to be within one day's drive of my family. Currently, I am one day's drive, but it's a nine-hour drive (and a drive I will be making in a few weeks--with two cats). But instead of going due north back to the Midwest, I will be going northwest. I'm moving to the state of Washington. I'll be in an academic library in the Pacific Northwest.

Ahhh... the Pacific Northwest. Oregon, Washington... Areas I have been obsessed with for a long time. I think it started when I found out several of my high school friends ended up in either Seattle, Washington or Eugene, Oregon. I didn't know why. Looking back, I know now it was probably the music. This was before Nirvana hit the big-time--this was when Seattle was still just a dreary, wet town in the Northwest. But my friends knew to head out there.

Then there was Twin Peaks. What an awesome show. My obsession may have started in earnest with that show. Odd that a show about a murder and the odd characters in a small town would make me want to move somewhere. If you knew me, maybe it probably wouldn't seem so odd.

As time went on, I still held this romanticized view of the Northwest. My former boss interviewed for a job in Seattle. She wanted to buy me a snowglobe, but couldn't because she couldn't tell me she'd interviewed. A couple years later, our summer intern gave everyone a present when he left. Everyone except me. He told me to wait, he had something special. A few weeks later I received a box containing two snowglobes: one from Wall Drug and one from the Corn Palace (both in South Dakota). His family drove to Seattle that summer and he bought them for me on the way. His intention was to buy me a Seattle snowglobe, but he liked these better (they are awesome). So began my obsession with Seattle snowglobes (now I have two).

When I graduated from library school I wanted to move to either Seattle or Portland. Well, me and everyone else I knew wanted to move to either Seattle or Portland. I had one friend who quit his job, rented an SUV, packed up his apartment and cat and drove to Seattle. And then spent a year looking for a job. I thought about doing the same thing, but I am one of those people who needs a plan and a back-up plan and possibly a safety net if the other plans don't work... Going someplace without income, etc., was something I could not do. But in the back of my mind, I figured someday... Yet, I hadn't even visited the area.

In the last four years I have been to the Pacific Northwest four times. Each time reinforced my idea that this was the place for me. So, finally, finally, after four and a half years in the deep south and pretty hardcore job search, I landed a job in the Pacific Northwest. And I'm psyched. I'm also freaked out, terrified, worried, and all those other things. But I know the next five weeks of hand wringing (not to mention the previous three weeks of hand wringing) will all be worth it. I will trade in my rented townhouse for a rented apartment that will probably be the size of a shoebox. But it will be a cool shoebox. In a place I think I am going to really like.

A couple of people asked me if I was going to change the title of my blog. I don't think so. A friend of mine here (Sweet Pickles) called me "that Yankee Librarian" for the first six months I lived here. It didn't really stick, so to speak. He stopped calling me that and no one else picked it up, but it still fit. And as he said to me once, "You are the Yankee-ist Yankee I have ever met." And, you know, I am. So, the name stays.