Making a motion toward something

It's been a good week. The vertigo bucket in my head has been mostly calm sailing. The salt shaker in my right ear has been mostly silent or just barely hissing. I hardly notice it. Really, I can't complain. Even getting a mammogram wasn't a big deal. Deflating the fun bags used to hurt. Now I barely feel it. I was in such a good mood, I did my taxes! It really was a good week. 

I hope I remember this moment. Tomorrow my so-called part-time job starts. I got hired as a remote dissertation editor for a department in a scrappy for-profit college. I've never heard of universities having editors on staff. I don't know yet what to think. I'll let you know. I don't know yet what my schedule will be. I'll let you know. I suspect whatever happens, the expectations will be ridiculously high and the compensation absurdly low. As usual, I'll let you know. Why am I doing this? What do you mean, at my advanced age? I guess I need something to focus on, something to spin around. Spinning around my next book project isn't filling up the well. I need to feel useful. 

And you'll be with me for all of it, as usual. Lucky you! For more than a decade, I've relied on this blog to absorb my angst. You've been there with me. I started the blog with some rants about my employer, a for-profit career college. I complained about my dissertation program, as I recall. I told you how I felt about being laid off from my job. I celebrated the PhD with you. I shared with you the ups and downs of dealing with my mother's dementia. You were the first to know when my cat died. And when my mother died. And then you came with me to Tucson. You've been with me the entire journey. Thanks for being my witness as the moments have unfolded. 

New moment, new unfolding. I feel as if I leaped off a cliff coming to Tucson, and I'm still falling. I had a picture in my head of what life in Tucson would be like. Peaceful, warm, mild, slow. Tucson is not that. Instead, I found rough, raw, loud, and fast. It's all about the sky here. No matter the weather, the sky dominates. In Portland I was hemmed in by trees. Oak trees, maple trees, ash, aspen, and cottonwood trees, pines, cedars, and spruce, spewing their leaves, needles, and pollen everywhere and covering up the sky. I was smothered in trees. Here, trees are an afterthought, barely a thought. Scrubby beat up things hiding in the washes or ridiculous telephone pole palms that give no shade while shaking their stupid pompoms in the wind. 

After almost ten months, I still don't know what to make of this city. I still get lost. I still don't know where I belong or where I'm going. I still feel like getting in my car and heading west until I run out of road.