If you can't be with the one you love, honey, love the one you're with

Last February, I was planning to move back to Tennessee before the summer's end. A year later, I can't see myself ever moving back to Tennessee. Which is one reason I try not to get too worked up over planning my near futurama, despite the occasional type-A inclination to do so.

But I'm at the nomad age, God bless it, and have no official career nor mortgage. I have to spend a small amount of time pondering the end of my verbal lease with Pete coming this September. Joining Americorps is something I'd really like to do and would make a move to the city more feasible. It seems a bitch in fees to move anywhere near Manhattan, so the program's relocation funding might help. And I'd have a job for one full calendar year, barring another social hiccup.

Still, almost every night I come home from work and find myself practically aching over the dark, quiet, open sky. It reminds me of the eclipse walk I took in Montauk two months after moving here, when I decided that I hadn't made a huge mistake after all. I truly love living in this area. I love knowing that the ocean is a ten-minute drive from my house. I love how desolate it feels during the winter. I love how crowded and pretentious it feels during the summer. I love the guy at the ma-pa drugstore who knows all about the battle at Stones River and told me so after reading the address on my birth control prescription. And I love the duck. I don't know if I'm ready to leave. Unfortunately, Americorps doesn't offer programs on Long Island. Thus I might have to endure another winter of scrounging for work, this time with hefty student loan bills to pay.

Looking back, it wasn't that bad. Was it?