GatorUptown's Blog

Friends and longtime readers probably are sick to death of hearing about Italy from me, but my love affair with the country continues unabated. If anything, our several visits have made me more enamored by Italy, rather than less.

And it’s only going to get stronger in 2019.

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Though I can hardly believe it’s true, I’ve finished an entire semester of teaching on campus. This means that I’ve completed an entire undergraduate term and two grad school terms (the regular semester is split into two 7-8 week terms) in person, rather than the online classes that I’ve been accustomed to.

It turns out that my experience has been completely unlike what I expected… in some very good ways.

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This has been a week of “homes” for me: I left West Palm Beach to go spend Labor Day weekend in NYC last week, and today spent a few hours at the Charlotte airport on the way home from a work trip. I’m on my way back to West Palm Beach now.

My head is spinning from it all.

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Two years ago, I embarked on a quest that I called “Kevin 2.0“. I had realized that I was being very negative, complaining frequently, and sharing bitter, cynical messages with the world. I announced a rebranding effort to put more positively out into the world.

Well, friends, it’s time for another upgrade: welcome to Kevin 3.0.

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First, just in case: my previous blog post about movers was an April Fool’s Day prank. Stuff arrived late as hell, but everything made it to us intact.

So now I just have to ask myself if I made it intact… and I’m not sure of the answer.

People keep asking me how I like living in South Florida. The truth is, I barely know. In the 2-3 months that I’ve lived there, I’ve rarely spent more than a week without getting on a plane. And when I’m home, I’m mostly working ridiculous hours at my FIVE adjunct teaching jobs, not to mention my consulting work, to help keep us afloat while we wait for my full time job to start,

The truth is, I’m lonely. I’m so incredibly lonely. The only real friends I have down here that I see regularly are our next door neighbors, who are amazing but who can’t be all things to us. We clearly need to branch out and make new friends in the area.

I miss my New York friends. I try not to be sad that almost none of them have reached out, but I can’t help it… it feels like as soon as we left, most of them wrote us off. I suspect that if I didn’t make outreach efforts, we would never hear from almost anyone that we knew in NYC, and man, that’s a sobering thought. It’s hard not to feel abandoned.

Maybe it’s for the best. Maybe knowing that we want to move across the ocean in a short few years means that letting ties wither is a good thing. But damn, some of the absentee friends from NYC were an integral part of our lives, until we weren’t geographically convenient… and it’s tough to take that as anything except a demonstration that most people aren’t nearly as close to you as you’d like to think.

Tonight I got back to my hotel in Chicago, after a fun night out, but in a conflicted state. I was happy about my evening, but drunk, and alone (and worse: lonely). I was nostalgic for NYC (having ridden in a car driving past the Chicago skyline) and remembering how close I used to feel to several people in that city… and then grimly realizing how far I am, in every sense of the word, from most of those people.

In reality, I’m not okay. I’ve clung to a facade of okay for awhile now, but moments like this — when I’m by myself and drunk and lonely — serve to remind me just how alone I can feel from time to time. Sal does a remarkable job of showing me how loved I am, but when I’m by myself and staring forlornly at the ceiling, that sentiment is very far away. Everyone feels very far away.

Don’t worry, I’m not a danger to myself tonight. But damn, do I feel alone sometimes. Moving away from NYC seemed to draw clear attention to how transient many of my friendships were, in ways that are both unexpected and retrospectively obvious. As my life takes me from one home to the next, I realize just how fleeting many of those friends were, and I’m disappointed, and sad.

And I’m sleepy, so I should rest. But liquid/tired courage shouldn’t be disregarded, so I wanted to express this pent up disappointment. It feels like moving brought some unwanted clarity, and that makes me sad.

I miss my people, and the way that they made an apartment in Queens feel like home.

The movers finally arrived yesterday, over three weeks (!!) after picking up our stuff. They’re gone now, and in their wake is a mess of epic proportions.

We would’ve been better off setting fire to everything we owned and starting over again.

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There are still quite a few details that are being worked out about our upcoming move to West Palm Beach, but there are now two things that are set: our flight down there to get the new house ready to move into, and the schedule for movers to collect our things in NYC and hit the road.

I’m excited, and terrified, and I spent a fair bit of time this morning crying.

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