It’s difficult to objectively evaluate the results of the decisions we make in life because it’s rare that the variables we’ve altered stay isolated for long. For one thing, if you have to wait to see how you like something, you’ll find that the fact that you’ve grown older while you were waiting may affect the results. I got my first real taste of this when I moved to Fredericksburg Virginia in 2002. I hated Fredericksburg. Living out there by myself taught me a lot of unpleasant truths about myself and I missed the social circle and city I’d left with a physical ache that was with me wherever I went. But 11 months later, when I went back, I didn’t return to the same situation I’d left. I returned to a third situation. Eventually I settled in but for a while it was unnerving.

If Fredericksburg gave me a taste, Seattle stuffed me full. I left Richmond behind and compared everything I saw to what I’d left behind. We were oh so progressive. I started gardening and composting because I had very moral concerns about how I ate. And then I went back to visit and all my friends were gardening too and they’d all become significantly foodier and some of them had compost piles and I read Style weekly and I said “Man, this city is getting better all the time”. I wasn’t part of something special that was happening just in Seattle. I was part of something that was happening nationally or maybe something that just happens to people who grow up, I don’t know. Now that I’ve been gone for 6 years, I really have no objective way to compare what life will be like in Richmond versus what it’s like in Seattle. Too much has changed. I’ve grown up too much, so have my friends, our world has moved too far.

By the way, is anyone still reading this drivel?