Not in Kansas anymore

Have you ever finally did the one thing that you feared the most?  Maybe it was trying a new food, or maybe you finally got the guts to do that open-mic night that all your friends convinced you would be a kill.  For me, it was moving to a new place.  Well, I guess i can't really call it new, since I was born there a few decades ago and had relatives there that I talk to pretty frequently.  But it was new in the sense that I hadn't actually lived there since a kid and everything has grown so much, it's pretty much like being in a foreign country and always having to stand there for what seems like eternity to translate the new currency to what you have in your pocket.  Yes, I could at last quote my favorite line in a movie 'To-do, we're not in Kansas anymore'.  For me, Kansas would be Atlanta and the new-but very old place would be Nashville.

So what do you do when you're in a new place and it feels in every way like everything is in a foreign language and you don't know where to start to understand?  You could easily reach out to relatives, but then what do you do when these easy-to-reach out to relatives are your Auntie Em's and Uncles?  It can be daunting to say the least.  In a place where it seems a lot like every one is dying to be the same, how do you continue to dare to be different, without sticking out like a sore thumb?  The answer, I'm afraid my friends is not an easy one.  I've searched high and low and I'm still searching for the right anecdote to what can be almost the hardest thing to do and what many fear...starting over in a new place.  Especially a place that you vowed you could never see yourself coming back to.  I'm still using my one days-at-a-time to pull it together.  But maybe there's not a one fell swoop solution, maybe it's a day-by-day transition that you don't really realize you've figured out, until the one moment you do. 

Well, here's hoping that you do better than I in facing your biggest fear and find as many things as possible to make your transition sweet instead of laboring over the actual task itself day after day after day like I have.  Do your due diligence to pat yourself on the back every chance you get for making the actual leap of faith, for abandoning your fear and throwing anxiety out the window.  Why?  Because the journey will probably not be the easiest and during the rainy, snowy or otherwise dreary days, won't be the most fun.  But one thing will be certain, you no longer spoke about it, imagined it or dreamed of how it would be, you actually got your butt up and did it.  You moved clear across the unimaginable and claimed your spot of accreditation.  Maybe being out of place isn't so bad after all, maybe it's just what we need to know just how far we can go because we've pushed ourselves outside of our limits.  Here's to Us! Here's to You! Here's to the future and the hell with those fears!

Signed,
So out of place...