2005-07-28 - 8:13 a.m.

It has begun. Sorry to have left anyone hanging previously, but the answer is yes: I started packing yesterday. September first will be the start of my new life in San Francisco. Am I having a nervous breakdown? I don't think so, but it seems like it: first, I quit a job I've had for a year and a half, and then I begin making preperations to move out of the state I've lived in for all of my life. I'm not in a state of mental collapse. Merely, I am intolerably bored, desperately seeking new horizons. I want to run away beyond the reach of my comfort zones, to force myself into new and shocking planes of reality, to wreak havoc on my own mind, so that I have a new foundation to build upon. Perhaps my words can be better expressed by my dear friend Frank Sinatra:

"Start spreading the news
I am leaving today
I want to make a brand new start of it
New York, New York
These vaugabond shoes
They are longing to stray..."

Or, perhaps not. Perhaps the words of Modest Mouse are what I am searching for:

"And you cocked your head and shot me down
And I don't give a damn about you or this town no more."

Or, perhaps, there are no words to express the new adventure I am preparing for, just the simple human instinct to probe and explore, to never grow old or tired. There is nothing for me left in this town, so fuck you. You know who you are, left with the reality of perpetual satisfaction, never growing or changing, stuck and stagnant. I'm tired of looking out of my window and seeing the same things, over and over again: that same tree, housing the same birds year after year, constantly building nests and having new offspring to constantly renew the cycle of life.

I plan to leave with nothing, rebuild myself, discarding all that I've accrued over these years, forget and begin, timidly, to forget. Is it possible?

P.S. I am entirely aware that Frank Sinatra did not actually write the song mentioned above, but I feel that the words are better expressed in his own voice.