Leaving Long Island: A Six Month Update

By the time this post goes live, I’ll have lived in Tallahassee for six months.

It absolutely does not feel like it. 

In a lot of ways, this all still feels new. The city. My neighborhood. The people. I’ve already gone through one whole semester of lectures and papers and exams and I still don’t quite feel like I’ve gotten my footing. I feel like I just got here. And yet, at the same time, I feel like I’ve always been here. Like, somehow, this is normal. Expected. Natural. 

It’s a strange sort of flux to sit in. 

I keep thinking about how all of this came to be. After all, I never anticipated being here. Tallahassee was never on my radar. When I thought about moving to Florida, it was a far-away possibility. I thought about palm trees and beaches and warm weather. I have the palm trees. The weather is mostly warm, though winter has ushered in some 20-degree mornings that I could do without. I’m an hour away from the closest beach. 

I’ve thought a lot about moving back home. Not now, of course. I came here for a reason, and barring any unseen circumstances, I’m not going to leave without that J.D. But when I’m finished; when school is finished. In two and a half years, after the cap and gown, I’ve thought a lot about going back to New York. I’ve even started looking at the job opportunities that could get me back there- the publishing companies, literary agencies, production companies. The higher education, because I went into this journey knowing that this wouldn’t be my last academic pursuit. 

The thing is, I don’t know if this is something that I want to do because I’m uncomfortable in Florida or because I truly feel more myself in New York. I think both are a little bit true. But, of course, it has only been six months. And I have 900-some-odd days to figure out what I really want, or what options are really available. I need to keep reminding myself not to rush. To trust the process. To be okay with where I am right now. 

It’s a process. 

One of the unexpected results of my move, though, has been a reinvigoration of my creativity. I didn’t realize it when I moved here, but Tallahassee is rich in art. The railroad district, the tiny coffee houses, a busy writers’ association, and the most active NaNoWriMo regional group I’ve ever seen.

Granted, my experiences are limited. I went to a couple of events with the Suffolk WriMos back home, and I’m in the groups for the Nassau County and NYC regions. But the Tallahassee group filled up my November weekends with flowing words, lots of laughs, and ice cream rewards aplenty - and it didn’t stop. We met up again right after the holidays to plan out year-round write-ins, critique meetings, and social outings. I’ve seen them twice since the new semester started, and it’s been so wonderfully inspiring and refreshing to put down the casebooks and just talk shop. 

Characters. Plot-lines. The structure of a single sentence and what it means in the overarching narrative of the chapter it sits in. These are things I didn’t realize I missed talking about until I was finally talking about them again. I found my people, so to speak. And, for that, I’m especially grateful. 

So, things are good. Weird, sure. Uncomfortable still; I still feel very much like a foreigner, and I don’t know if I would call this place home just yet. But it’s good. It’s exciting. I feel strange and wonderful at the same time, but most of all I feel happy. Really, really happy.