Overthinking

I haven't posted anything in a while, which, ironically, has given me great cause for anxiety. I hold my blog in somewhat high regard and don't feel that the world is exactly chomping at the bit to know what I had for lunch or what music I'm listening to at any given point. For those who are curious it was spaghetti and Franz Ferdinand's You Could Have It So Much Better :-) I prefer to blog solely about topics that are related to urban planning, but lately the muse has been fleeting.

For whatever reason there hasn't been much on my mind that I felt like blogging about. And the more I thought about what I wanted to blog about, the less and less came to mind.

For a while I even despaired, thinking, incorrectly, that I had covered every topic worth writing about within the realm of urban planning! Ah, hubris, you are a seductive, though misleading siren.

Have no fear faithful reader, whomever you may be, I do have some topics floating around in my (slightly dented) cranium- the role of architecture in our society, skate punks, etc., But like a good red wine, they require a little aging before being savored.

However, I have been thinking about what compels us to stay or go in a place. I had remarked a little bit on this in my January 4th, 2009 posting, Home is Where the Heart Is?

But the thoughts continued during a conversation with my friend, who I had mentioned in the aforementioned post, had moved up to Boston after abruptly leaving Savannah. Although she still is enraptured by the (forgotten) possibilities that come with a big city, she sometimes feels a pang for the little conveniences that Savannah afforded her. Minute, little, inconsequential details like the fact that her Best Buy was open until 11 PM. The one closest to her in Boston closes at 9 PM. Or that she used to be within walking distance of her local grocery store- the big kind, not the little get-n-go corner store. Now it is a train ride away, which makes loading up a challenge. She wondered when these thoughts would go away.

I, all too keenly, know what she meant. I graduated from college in Savannah, kicked around town for a few months while eagerly sending out resumes and waiting for responses. When I did not receive any replies at the companies I hoped to work at, my parents decided that it would cheaper for me to live at their house in Wisconsin then continue to pay my rent in Savannah, where there are not a lot of opportunities within the fine art insurance field, my chosen field. So, I moved back in with my parents, while pining for my college town.

Ironically, at the same time, when I left Savannah I had grown slightly tired of the city. Don't get me wrong, I love Savannah itself. It is beautiful, it has heartbreakingly gorgeous architecture, the city's Jewel Plan, with its unique squares, each with their own little park, a microcosm unto itself is fantastic. But everything kindof grinds to a halt at 6 PM. Not 9, not 11, 6. There are bars, good bars, heck, great bars to be enjoyed. However, that's about it.

If one is a student at SCAD, you often spends your evening's crouched on the floor of your apartment or dorm feverishly gluing together scraps of toothpicks and Bristol board for some lame project that you will probably trash as soon as the class is over. But in that moment it means the world to you and Heaven help anyone that stands in your way or tries to persuade you otherwise.

This actually applies to all majors at SCAD, even the fashion and historic preservation majors as we are all subjected to the horrors of 3-D design class, which, regardless of the professor, make us construct bizarre little sculpture-like projects in order to understand form, volume, etc., This lesson plan in itself is not bad. It's just the materials that they make you use has one question the validity of such an expenditure. That which separates us from the kindergartners who build birdcages from Popsicle sticks is a $2,000 price tag per class. To their credit, SCAD does make us use more classically traditional 3-D materials as well, but lugging around a 20 lb. block of aerated concrete in the Southern heat does not exactly inspire visions worthy of Michelangelo.

As I was an art history major I had relatively few classes that were studio-based, which afforded me exorbitant amounts of free time in the evenings, much to my roommate, the interior design major's chagrin. So, like many red-blooded college co-ed's I spent my meager paycheck at B&B, or watching movies in our apartment, while pretending that White Chicks was for my History of Film class or something equally erudite, as my roommate tried not to cut off her finger cutting endless sheets of foam-core with her xacto knife.

But I pined for those nights at B&B and days sitting in the squares, soaking up the Southern sun, as I sat in my room in New Berlin, WI, a modest suburb of Milwaukee, as I drafted yet another sincere cover letter to a farway company in New York City. I missed stupid stuff like the throngs of tourists that flocked to the Riverwalk. I missed homeless people that sat in Forsyth Park and the over-privileged, entitled freshman who strutted around like they were going to be the next Picasso or Miuccia Prada.

Time wore on, and eventually I moved to Chicago and forgot about the specifics of Savannah that made my heart yearn.

The character, Lillith on the season finale of Frasier astutely observed that "with one hand the past holds us back and with the other it pulls us forward." I have found that very true.

We are all the end product of the sum of our parts, be they good, be they bad, regrettable, or vindicating. And as we settle into new chapters in our lives, we often experience a longing for what we have just left, even if it did not always give us pleasure. Sometimes the fact that it just was, and could be counted on to be, creates an unexpected ache. I suspect that we are creatures of habit, and within familiarity lies comfort. Then again, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Therefore, there is no shame in looking back, as long as you do not lose sight of what lies ahead of you as well.