I’m sorry this is late. It’s been a busy week and I am afloat no more.
It is generally accepted that the two happiest days of your life are the day you buy your boat and the day you sell it. I’m pretty sure that’s not true but to delve into which might really be those happiest days would require putting certain facts into the harsh light of the blogosphere. As a fiction writer – even a “blogging” fiction writer – I find it prudent to distance myself from anything remotely connected to the facts. As a putative “public figure” certain stones will be left unturned. At least my stones will remain in the upright and locked position. I’m not so sure about yours.
Moving off the boat does have its downside. I will miss being rocked gently while the ripples slap against the hull. I know the sunsets on land won’t hold a candle to watching the green-flash in the Caribbean. This is not to say that not owning a boat is without certain benefits. For the past three nights I have not had to get up in the middle of the night worrying if I had somehow dragged into the next county due to a wind shift or change of the tide. Being able to sleep all the way ‘til 5AM is something I will enjoy. I will no longer have to hang on for dear life just to move a few feet across the boat nor feel my body try to peel off my skin as the boat rolls from rail to rail in a “lively” anchorage. I’m sure additional benefits will become apparent in the upcoming days and weeks. I hope I recognize them when they make themselves known.
Which brings me to my current dilemma: where to live. I don’t know why this is such a tough decision because I already know where I want to live. I spent several weeks in New York City on two occasions this past summer. New York, NY is really a heck of a town and the song does get most of the facts straight from a geographical perspective. What really surprised me was how quickly I readapted – New York City being my hometown – to the frenetic pace and energy that defines New York and makes cardiologists the only people on the street wearing a smile. I looked into renting an apartment and found first that is no place to live within several hundred percent of my budget and that those bargain prices would get you something that a real estate agent from Dubuque would describe as a “walk-in closet”. Plus, all the good “rural” land in the city has been ill-advisedly dedicated to public use as “parks”. What were they thinking? As much as New York City appealed to me it would have to get scratched off the list. Maybe I can put it back on someday after fortune or the PowerBall have smiled upon me.
With New York removed as a candidate I shaved a grand total of 304.8 sq mi (789.4 km2 for everyone else) out of the potential habitable space I was considering. I briefly toyed with the idea of living overseas. I truly enjoyed the time I lived out of the United States. However, if I’m going to be serious about being a writer I am going to need to be in and among my potential readers. The internet may make it possible to do most of the things I’ll need to along my new career path but living abroad would make book tours and those high-dollar speaking engagements difficult if not impossible.
I do have one requirement that narrows down my search area. I want to be able, without benefit of my van/home/storage facility, and without taking more than 30 minutes, get to someplace where I can dip my finger into naturally occurring salt water. I am an Ocean Person. This really hacks a chunk of potential real estate – some 3.8 million sq miles (9.8 million km2) – off of my search area. The 20 thousand-some sq mi (58 thousand plus ou moins km2) remaining is where my search can begin. That’s still a lot of area.
I can whittle away even more area by applying some additional constraints. After two years in the Caribbean I am so over being hot. That chops off the Gulf Coast States and South Carolina and Georgia. Eastern North Carolina and the Tidewater area of Virginia can get hot but not quite as bad as the Deep South. Further north is the area I lived in the longest and holds less appeal just for that reason. Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire are all closely tied to Boston. I’m sure it’s a very nice area and I’m sure Boston is fine as “cities” go but I’m from New York. That’s all I’m going to say about that. I spent the summer in Maine a few years ago and have visited the state on several occasions during winter. What I remember is that the summers are lovely and the winters are cold enough to freeze electricity. That might make working online a bit difficult. I’m not ready to rule Maine out but I think I need to keep looking.
Then there’s the West Coast. I am reminded of an old cover from the New Yorker magazine which depicts how a New York native looks at the rest of the country. Manhattan and the other four boroughs loom largest followed closely by Upstate New York, New Jersey and Florida. Go figure. Forty-six other states are unidentifiably scattered across the page where, in the distance, California appears as it should. Hmmm…. California. The Land of Fruits and Nuts. I could fit right in. I’ve spent a lot of time in California. I really like Northern California. It’s cool – in all the possible ways it can be. Unfortunately, through an accident of Geology, it is attached to Southern California. On one hand SoCal provides the State a seemingly endless string of has-been actors to serve as governor. On the other it serves as the cultural drain of the nation. Sucking talent and creativity from the rest of the Country it chokes back up the mind-numbing plumbing clogs that pass for entertainment but are really just a vector for advertising as infectious as a swarm of malarial anopheles. I best stop now before this turns into a “Kill Your TV” rant. I probably should avoid anyplace that could make me, if this is even possible, more cynical. I marked an “X” next to California.
On that same magazine cover were a couple of insignificant smudges just north of California. I learned several decades later that they were actual States out there and not parts of Canada. They had names – Oregon and Washington – and, believe it or not, people lived there. Wow, I wonder what they’re like. I started looking, and what I saw through the brief faint holes in the rain-saturated clouds was very interesting indeed. Friends in the East warned me that it was dreary and everybody committed suicide. Not only was the populace not walking around in a depressive funk – statistically, Washington barely breaks into the top half, Oregon is much higher up but then it is also closer to California – but the inhabitants of the area whom I’ve met seem happy and well-adjusted. While that may make it difficult for me to fit in I figured it might be worth a shot. The Pacific Northwest is definitely on the list That pretty much summarizes what I’m going to be doing over the next couple of months. I’ve got to make a decision about where I’m going to let myself dry out and I’ll report in regularly. Flitting about endlessly is probably not my best strategy in the long term. However, I do have to acknowledge a certain wanderlust on my part and, regardless of where my roots start to grow, reserve the right to rip myself up and replant myself in the rich, fertile soil of California.