Year 54: Turn and face the strange.

earth-sun

It’s been about four hours since I began my 54th orbit. To be honest, I slept through it: coma-inducing levels of Benadryl got me through the Museum of the American Revolution this morning, but the piper had to be paid on returning home. Cybernation 2019 has been more about sleep–and Kleenex–than any other.

My focus for Year 53 was health maintenance: regular doctor’s visits, the typical old-man medications to moderate previous years’ excesses, and doing my part to help end the plague that has haunted my adult life. Work has been station-keeping, having a positive cash flow while waiting for a new Hoover Dam to present itself (which it hasn’t). There’s been very little in my private life worth keeping private. I’ve reconsolidated since Callie imploded two years ago, and a sense of general dissatisfaction has grown along with my means to do something about it.

It’s not just the wanderlust that last year’s trip to the West Coast stirred up. My carefully engineered life was fine-tuned to the me of fifteen years ago. It was finely-tuned to the Philadelphia, the United States, and the world of that time. All of those things have changed, and the fit is no longer so good. It’s time to refactor.

Maybe this is the year I move West, to the familiar comfort of San Francisco or lingering infatuation with Seattle. Maybe after 18 years of fence-sitting, this is the year I move to New York City. Maybe there’s a smallish city in a blue state with a vibrant tech scene and gay community to call home. Maybe this is the year I move back to Old City to reclaim comforts and conveniences I traded for the denser pleasures and messes of life in Center City. Maybe.

Still don’t know what I am waitin’ for…