I always wondered what it would feel like to leave San Francisco. I’ve thought about it many times over the years. I almost did it, a few times. I had endless conversations with my parents, walking up and down Haight St, screaming into the phone about how unhappy I was. Stumbling around 7th and Harrison, after I left my keys at a speed dating event and they were gone when I went back. I pictured slinking back to Austin as a failure, tail between my legs. On good days I imagined finding the woman of my dreams, moving in together, then eventually - when we decided to have a family - heading to someplace like Austin, or Oakland, or Madison, WI. One time I almost took a job in Iceland, just because the women seemed hot and interesting and I was antsy. In the end, though, what happened was none of those things. After way too many years of living various unhappy lies, I finally moved out of San Francisco about a year and a half ago. Oh, not physically - I still lived here, at 1970 Hayes. But mentally I left. After the ashes of Kimberly leaving me died down, I went on yet another dating spree. I considered moving into a swanky $5000 apartment downtown. I bought nice clothes from Express, and Jack’s, and Lululemon. I tried to focus on work. I dated a fashion model, two redheads, and a woman who made me enter and leave her apartment through the window so her roommates didn’t know I existed. And one day, I had enough. I can’t tell you what exact day it was, but it must have been about Christmas, of 2013. That year I drove from SF to Austin for the holidays. I don’t even remember why. But I remember I was in the car alone on Christmas Day, somewhere in the middle of nowhere. I stopped at the Grand Canyon, and I only stayed about an hour or two because it was -2 degrees and I was in short sleeves. I don’t honestly even remember much of what I did on New Year’s Day. I imagine I did something. Maybe I hung out with Mark? Can’t recall. Somewhere in there, though, I made a fateful decision - to take a month long yoga retreat. I had been doing some yoga for a while; a holdover of Kimberly’s time with me, when I discovered meditation but realized it was too slow and I needed some action. I was a babe in the woods, although I didn’t know it at the time. It honestly seems like only yesterday, but the calendar tells me it was February of last year, almost a year and a half ago. I met 30 amazing people. I’d love to say it was an instant transformation, but of course it wasn’t. I stumbled through it. I ended up dating someone from the retreat, who was easily as messed up as I was. I told her that she was a threat to my happiness. Then she drove me to Tahoe and left me there and told me to take the train back. Nobody I knew was stable, least of all me.
But something changed during that yoga retreat. Or, maybe it had started changing before that, and this was the first bubble that crested the surface. I sat, while the amazing Darren Main led us in Pranyama, and cried like a baby. I lifted up into full wheel. I joined a men’s yoga club. I ate vegetarian food. Mostly, though, I stopped thinking about computers as much. In the following year, I did some contracting here and there, but mostly, I learned about myself. I got trained as a personal trainer. I played Hearthstone. I went to my buddy’s farm and moved marijuana plants (they’re surprisingly big). I stopped dating, then I started again, then I stopped. Finally, I had enough. I made plans to leave; to ride my bike in the summer,. So I did; 2600 miles. If the yoga retreat was the beginning of the end, the bike ride was the middle. I learned a ton about myself, documented elsewhere here in this blog. I rode through tiny Bend, Oregon, and I liked it a lot. I met an amazing woman and we joined hands for the Oregon Country Fair. She showed me the door back to a happy place (thanks, Emili with an “i”) and then had the good sense to get married (and not to me!). I had the time of my life, quite probably - at least up until now. I hardly touched a computer, except to update my blog. A few months after I got back, I knew I needed to leave, and Bend came to the top of the list. I looked for an excuse to leave, and found one at the Outdoor Leadership program at Central Oregon Community College. So, not knowing a soul in Bend, I packed up my car, rented my room to a stranger, and left. At the time, I knew it was temporary. Although I had imagined leaving San Francisco as a singular moment, in truth it’s been a journey. And even though I’m leaving again this weekend, this time for Portland, I have no way of knowing if this is the last time I’ll sleep in this town. In fact, it’s quite likely that it’s not. But one way or another, the “San Francisco” phase of my life is over. It started to end about a year and a half ago, and it comes ever closer to ending this weekend.
There are so many great people here. There are also very many toxic people here, especially if you let them get under your skin. But I’ll choose to remember the good ones; Leah Bradley, Micah Potts, my brother Jason, Abby Sanford, Katie, Silke, David (both of them). All of them will be part of my life going forward; and not just spiritually; I’’ll be back to visit, and you should all come to visit me.
Eating dinner with a friend of mine who lived in Portland for 6 years, he described it - affectionately - as a place where ambitions go to die. And it’s true. The very thing I complained about in San Francisco is one of the things I needed the most; the challenge. It is so hard here that it hones you; it breaks you down until you really decide what it is you want in life. It’s a deceptively hard place, where people have trouble getting close, and the stress is palpable, hanging in the air like the fog. For all that, though, it is a place of many good memories nestled in among the truly crappy ones. I know I’ll be back. But it will be different this time.