Nebraska to San Francisco

I hate hellos. I think they’re harder than goodbyes. With goodbyes, at least you can turn your head away if the tears are coming. With a hello, you’re kind of obliged to make eye contact and it’s bound to be awkward no matter how hard you try not to look like a dork.

Anyways… hi.

I’ve been mulling and mulling over this first post for days now. And here I am, only on the seventh damn sentence (I actually counted, yeah).

I’m a Nebraskan. I’m from Nebraska. That might seem redundant, but I think some people all-too-eagerly give up being a Nebraskan as soon as they move away, and I haven’t. And I can't imagine that I ever will.

But I did move away. After a childhood in Grand Island, and a much older but no less childish young-adulthood in Lincoln, I developed wanderlust. I wanted to find out what it was like living someplace different.

Careful what you wish for, as they say.

In August 1997, I had a yard sale. It’s really too bad if you missed it. This was an unnecessarily desperate liquidation of everything I had. I sold VCRs for a dollar, my guitar for three bucks, and antique furniture for pennies. I mean, there were some incredible steals. Literally. I felt really ripped off after the dust settled. What an idiot I was. But I made $250 and got rid of most of my stuff, which was my goal.

And in September 1997, I loaded what I had left onto a truck and hit the road with my oversized feline pal, Sherman. We started driving west. We slept in the back of the truck when we needed to sleep. And sung out loud to crappy AM radio, when we could get a signal, while on the move. Sherman was pretty damn good company (and he has a better singing voice). Four days later, there was no more west for us to drive. We were in San Francisco.

I was looking for someplace different and I gotta tell you, I found it in spades.

Looking back, I was really dumb. Naïve. The greenest of greenhorns. With no job, no place to live, and less than 2 Gs in the bank – but wearing the biggest stupid grin you’ve ever seen – I had just rolled into the most expensive frigging place on the continent, where a studio apartment was renting for $1800 a month, and the vacancy rate was point-one-percent. (Point!) I was now poised to learn a big lesson in survival (I’ll save the story of my first San Francisco “apartment” for later).

So, fast-forward eight years and Sherman and I are still here. It’s amazing what a fool can accomplish when he doesn’t know the odds. Over the years I have grown, matured, struggled, and questioned a lot of things. I’ve had some of my beliefs tested and some reinforced. On occasion, I’ve had my mind blown. Throughout this process, I’ve gradually become a San Franciscan, fully embracing everything that it entails.

I would expect a San Franciscan who moves to Nebraska with an open heart and mind to undergo a similar transformation. In many ways they are truly different worlds. And though I’m here now, I’m still a Nebraskan, and that is how we will achieve parallaxis.

The term parallax pertains to the viewing of something from two or more perspectives – particularly how differently a thing can appear simply depending on where you’re sitting. I find that I have a parallax view on a lot of things in my life, now that I see them as a Nebraskan, but also as a San Franciscan. It’s actually a really nice view.

So that’s what I hope I can provide with this blog – along with some laughs, and maybe a few things that make us all think a little – a parallax view on our worlds, San Francisco and Nebraska. And that, my new friends, concludes my first post.

Now that I’ve gotten my awkward “hello” out of the way and laid the ground-work for where this thing is – maybe – going to go, I promise a much more interesting post next time – all about drugs and sex (including lots of nudie pictures)! OK? I’ll see you then.