Choose My Melody

I haven’t always done things in the traditional sense. Taking four years to get my two-year degree after high school, I’d quickly tired of the scholastic grind and settled into the bar industry for the next decade. Education was not a priority at that stage in my life. Life was about experiences, adventure, memories. There would always be time to pursue that next degree. And I was an opportunistic traveler.

Like education, I’d taken that untraditional approach to my living situations as well. Satisfied with renting, the idea of buying a house never seemed like a good – or feasible – idea to me. I had no idea where I wanted to plant roots, but I knew I hadn’t seen enough ground to make that choice yet. Not nearly.

By now, it’s become obvious - I’ve never desired or striven for permanence.

As I give it its due scrutiny, the very thought of permanence in itself, at least in a geographic sense, sounds dreadful. I’ve wrung my mind for what would be considered the opposite of permanence, and it’s evident: fluidity. The freedom to come and go. The absence of an itinerary, or a destination. The journey itself should be the destination – permanence the search. The search for what, I still don’t know. But I know I won’t find it standing in one place.

Society has always dictated for us the correct order of things: go to school, get a job, buy a house, have a family. The expectation to achieve these milestones has, for me, been like an expectation to dance when there’s no music. Stoke my passion with a heavy melody, and it will move me. But in the stagnation of silence, stillness will remain.

And so here I found myself in winter, 2023, and by choice; no partner, no children, no mortgage, – and newly, no job – tethering me to my city. I was quite literally free to go. Free to choose my melody, to move with whatever stirred me.

And I began to sift through the rolodex of tracks in my busy mind.