The year in review

As I noted in the previous blog post, my official start date of residence in the Land of the Pines was July 1, 2008. That was the day I drove the rental truck from... no, wait. I remember staying at a motel in New Jersey--this is when motels were slashing their rates because no one was going anywhere because gas prices were reaching their peak, but I had stupidly locked in my rate months earlier. I suppose I could have cancelled the reservation and saved a heap of money, but it's not easy to communicate that situation through a tiny little metal grille in 1/2" of bulletproof plexiglass. So that must have been June... 29? Then at Grandma's for the evening of June 30? Then into Raleigh on July 1? Yep, that sounds right. I remember being scared driving the truck the whole way down. At city driving speeds, it was just a standard shitbox rental truck clanging along the road. But take it on the highway, it would shake itself to pieces between 45 and 55 mph, meaning I either had to drive it faster than I was hoping or much, much slower... and if I opted for faster, I would somehow have to cross the threshold on the slow-down. The thing would literally shake enough--the whole thing, not just the engine--that I wouldn't have been surprised for big chunks to start falling off. It got so bad driving into town on US 64 that I had to pull over on the highway to collect myself... almost there.

The point was, even though I moved in July 1, I still had to fly back home and collect the cat and the car, so I wasn't a permanent fixture here until July 5th (thus avoiding the question of what the hell I'm supposed to do here on the 4th of July... which happens to be the first day two years ago that I came to Raleigh, during which I observed the festivities at the State House and even found Port City Java on Fayetteville Street open despite the holiday).

I underestimated the trauma involved in moving by a wide margin. I've never been especially sensitive to homesickness. When college started in Troy, NY, in 1996, the trauma of architecture education must have quickly superseded whatever homesickness I could have experienced. And for life thereafter, including grad school, I was never more than an hour from family. Even three months in Rome in 1999 was less traumatic--probably because it was so damn awesome and the trauma was spread out amongst twenty schoolmates that I knew fairly well. But this time, coming to Raleigh, it was all me and only me. Trying to tie down a job. Getting the car registered and inspected. Finding furniture. Finding a new doctor. Being stared at for walking. Being on edge with anxiety just about every day at work.

Things settled down in stages, but I would say I was still quite unhappy--or at least unsettled--through to Thanksgiving. I think that was my first trip home (actually a business trip to Cambridge a week or two earlier was my first time back in Mass.). At about the same time I gave up on slogging through the anxiety and re-started my anxiety meds. And I started a project at work that was more in line with my experience. Etc. etc.

It probably wasn't until three months ago, though, that I really started to feel like I had momentum here in Raleigh. That was about when I got laid off from work. Somehow an event that had the potential to really fuck up everything managed to solidify my resolve to stay here. Of course, the fact that I was back at work within a week and a half made the whole thing easier, and I'm not sure what the situation would have led to otherwise... but for once I was able to clarify that I had an identity here without my job being its central component.

Since then, I've met many new folks in town, been out more on weekends, corresponded with the leadership at NCSU School of Architecture, gotten active in the local professional organization, and all those other fun distractions that help keep a person from thinking about how hard their life is.

So, for future reference, it takes Paul Lipchak between 9 and 12 months to feel "at home" in a new place.