unknown home.

I can't tell if I'm just a fickle person, or if I'm not investigating my ideas enough, or what it is, but everytime I think I'm on a path, I get flustered and fidgety and I start thinking there are holes in my plan or that I'm moving in the wrong direction.

Let me lay it out for you.

New York City:

I remember being in the seventh grade, filling out a sheet in a workbook for D.A.R.E. education on what kind person I was and who I aspired to be. I remember so vividly reading the question, "Where do you see yourself in ten years?" and without blinking, I wrote, "New York City." I don't remember why I felt this way, or where the inspiration came from, but I know that feeling never really went away. In the past year, I've been given more and more reason to get excited about the possibility of living in New York City; I found a great program at CUNY Hunter that would allow me to get my teaching credentials in deaf education in just one year, several of my high school friends and college friends are currently living or plan to live in the city, and I am young twenty-something who is ambitious and excited about the prospect of living in such a bustling and beautiful place, even if only for a year or two.

And there's there San Francisco:

I could move to New York, Vermont, Bali, Ireland, Morocco, or Antarctica, and this image right here would always and forever invoke the sense of "home" for me. San Francisco is, in a word, magical, and sometimes I still can't believe this is where I grew up. While I didn't become familiar with the actual city until the end of my high school experience, it doesn't mean my childhood memories don't consist of amazing places and people from all over the Bay Area that will always essentially keep me rooted to "the city by the sea." While New York is big and exciting and cultural and luring...San Francisco is too, but in a more serene and comforting way. My family is here. My dog is here. The Pacific Ocean is here. Haight/Ashbury is here. Ring Mountain and Mt. Tamalpais are here. 60 degree winters are here. My childhood, my memories, my essential being...is here.

New York offers the chance to do something big and crazy and new until I'm ready to move on. I know I will never settle in a place like New York; try and find a long term career and raise a family. But I also know that once I move back to the Bay Area, I doubt I'll ever leave again. Do I push for the unknown, or settle for my beautiful home?