7 year itch?

Seven years ago today I moved to Portland. It was never really in my plans. I had just graduated from BYU and was working on campus in the visitor’s center and trying to figure out what I was going to do next. The job market sucked around that time. I had interviewed half heartedly with some accounting firms but nothing really panned out. The only offer I got was with my current employer in Portland. I wasn’t so stoked about moving to a place where I knew no one. I think I would have stayed at the visitor’s center indefinitely if I could have, but being a campus tour guide wasn’t really a viable long term option.

I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to move to Portland and most people told me what I wanted to hear and validated my feelings that moving here wasn’t a good idea. One girl that I didn’t know very well overheard one such conversation though and she told me to do it. To take the job. She told me Provo was a lifesuck and if I didn’t leave and conquer another city I would regret it. My dad also called me to make sure I knew what to do/say when I got a job offer. As a result of those two conversations, I decided this was something I should at least prayerfully consider.

Pure logic alone should have told me to take the job and make the move. It was a good opportunity and it was pretty much my only real opportunity. I don’t always do things necessarily because it’s logical though. After a couple of days the feelings caught up with the logic and three weeks later my friend Kevin drove with me and helped me move before he turned around and drove all the way back to Provo.

I had arranged to move into a house with some guys in the singles ward. I arrived on a Sunday and they were at church so they left a key for me. I went in and took one look around and realized I couldn’t live there. I went to the church and the singles ward was just getting out of sacrament meeting and I ran into a friend from BYU who offered up his couch. I crashed there for a couple of days until I found a studio apartment downtown. That first day is very vivid in my memory though. Bryce’s kind interest in me, Amber’s fantastic scarf, dinner at Skye’s and a conversation with her about church music, meeting Lori over cobbler, KaRyn inviting me to FHE. It’s kind of comforting to realize that so many of the people I met that first day are some of my closest friends.

I’ve done some fairly stupid things since I’ve lived here, but overall, Portland and the people I’ve met and become friends with since I’ve lived here have helped me step outside of myself and see myself in a different light. I think extracting yourself for a time from the place you grew up in is a good thing. It’s helped me see myself and my life through a different lens.

So to that girl whose name I no longer remember, I left and conquered another city. Sucka what?