As I get closer to moving, I'm getting crankier, and for that, I apologize right now. Some of it may simply be the juggling of everything I need to get done before I leave, but that's not a very good excuse, since I've had a long time to prepare for the move. (Too long, actually; my friends have been trying to tell me goodbye for weeks.)
While I am very much looking forward to my new position, my new apartment, and my new city, I'm also conflicted about leaving Nashville. Some of this is natural healthy: Six years has been long enough to make me a part of a community, as I realized the other day when I was in the bank and I actually ran into someone I knew. I'm going to miss Steadfast and True Yoga (question: Does Gillian St. Clair and the Steadies sound like a band to anyone else?), Capoeira Angola Palmares Nashville and the local capoeira community, the Nashville Hiking Meetup, and my friends at Vanderbilt (not to mention the tremendous resources its endowment provides). Even if we remain in touch, it's not the same as being here with you.
But it's also a time for second-guessing the choices I've made, or, as to quote Barriss Mills,
Gone forever,
like the girls I never kissed,
and the places I never visited -
the lost lives I never lived.
The mistakes I've made, the chances I didn't take, the opportunities I walked by - these are all starting to show up in my rearview mirror. And my tendency is, as always, to assume that these things would have been fabulous if only I had done them. I recognize the dubiousness of that assumption, of course; I just don't feel it.
Unlike the mirrors on a car, though, these objects are farther than they appear. There is no going back. The only benefit to reconsidering them is to learn from my mistakes, but at a certain point it stops being useful and becomes poisonous regret. I am pretty sure I'm at that point.
So Nashville and Nashvillians, yes, I'll miss some of you, but I probably won't tell you that again. This is your last goodbye.
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