Where the hell is Anna?

Epilogue

So I haven’t updated in awhile because I had some priorities to get underway, like a job and a place to live. I am currently living in Bremerton, which is directly across the Puget Sound from Seattle, which means I have to either a) take the ferry or b) drive all the way around the Sound, through Tacoma. Either of these options take about an hour and a half. The ferry is expensive and requires a lot of waiting, so driving around is my preferred option, but even that takes 3 hours of my life, has a $4.00 toll and eats up a a half a tank of gas. So finding a place closer to the city is a must. There’s nothing out here in Bremerton. Driving around, it looks a lot like Orlando, but less ethnic.

My other, even higher priority was finding work. I checked craigslist first and there was at least 20 relevent teacher openings that I applied for. In Florida, there would be maybe 2 in that same time frame. So that was good. I got a job interview at a Kindercare in Bellevue. I didn’t have high expectations for it, because I knew Kindercare was a national chain. They had one down the street from me in Orlando and it looked kind of shitty. But I go to the interview and it was the best interview of my life. The director was super cool and the place had a really positive energy to it and I was really hoping to get the job… and I did! She called me back a few days ago and offered it to me and I definitely accepted. I will be their full-time lead preschool teacher starting on April 14th. I’ve never taught my own class and I’m really excited. And to think, even a shitty teaching job is hard to come by in Florida. Here, I got a perfect job and I’ll even be making more money than I could in Florida.

So that brings me to housing. I looked at places on craigslist in Ballard, the cutest part of town. The first place that I looked at, the house was really cool and had an awesome yard and the neighborhood looked so wonderful to walk through, with flowering trees everywhere and even good street parking. I looked at a few more rooms after that, but none compared to the first one’s luster. I kept in touch and met the other roommate, and now I’m moving in there on the 12th! The place is gorgeous. I will have to take pictures. But yeah, that’s only $500 a month and the only utility is heat, which they pay every other month and comes to something ridiculous like $8 when split three ways.

So now, I’m all set with job and home with about a week to bum around Bremerton before I have to do anything. A day in Bremerton is pretty boring, so I try to head into the city as much as I can. There’s a coffee shop in Tacoma that makes the best lattes ever. I’ve drank some amazing coffee on this trip and I’ve been drinking it almot every day just because it’s so delicious. I’ve almost given up on tea after Tucson; Andrew spoiled me. Now Seattle’s spoiled me. Once you’ve had the best, it’s hard to go back. Now I want the best of everything, mostly coffee.

People have been saying how brave I am to do this and yada, yada, yada. I don’t know know how it happened, but travelling across the country and finding a home and a job in under a month was actually kind of easy. I don’t know if it was god or luck or karma or the-right-place-at-the-right-timedness, or perhaps some sort of magic, but everything’s somehow worked out without any worry or too much thought. I might attribute it to being stoned nearly the entire time, but hey, the results of this trip are not a mass hallucination, I fucking did it. I know the story’s not nearly done yet, but at least this chapter was pretty goddamn exciting. I feel like I’ve grown much quicker in this past month than I have in years. And I feel like much of this growth is because of Brianna, I don’t think this trip would have been so positive alone or with anyone else. So this is my internet shout-out to Brianna. She knows how much I love her, but when it’s expressed, love increases exponentially and I want the world to know.

So what I’m saying is, why haven’t I done this sooner? Fear, mostly. Fear of failure, fear of the unknown. I’d never failed at anything before, mostly because I’ve never done anything with any kind of risk involved. Seriously, my drug of choice is like, what, the only substance known to man not to kill anyone, with its only major side-effect being that you’re too content with life to do anything about it. I’m just not a fan of fucking up, so I tend to take it easy, take it slow. But taking it slow and easy tends to get boring over time. My mind goes in a rut, and ruts, as a definition, are an erosion of ground. So I lose my grounding and lower my standards just because it’s too much work to to climb the fuck out or even just veer in another direction from time to time. I guess the boredom just got to me and I realized that I can afford to take a risk. I’m smart, I’ve got money saved up. Nothing bad has ever happened to me before, so even if it does, I think I could handle it. I think I’ve been placed into an artificial bubble of fear, placed there by my parents, my friends, the nightly news (which I don’t even watch, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect me). I don’t know why people are so inclined to be frightened of others or frightened of the world.

I guess others have had bad experiences and they have a valid reason to be afraid and mistrustful of the world, and I don’t blame them. Not everyone is intelligent enough to learn from their mistakes, But some people just have it in their mind, and it’s just something that can be overcome with a positive outlook. Positivity is much more powerful than I’ve ever realized. Yeah, there were a few days on the road that were caught up in bad vibrations, but for most of it, Brianna and I were our own shining beacons of love. We brought the sunshine and we shared. That’s why Seattle is so beautiful. The sky is cloudy, but the people glow. And I know love is sometimes hard to cultivate when there is so much negativity in the world. The only thing you can do is work on yourself and try to be the best person you can be. The hardest part is breaking down the steps to accomplish it, but nothing comes without at least a little bit of planning and preparation. Find what you love to do and do it. If you believe in youself, you will come true.